The Coen Brothers new movie, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” hits theaters in December 2013. Casey Mulligan, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake and Garrett Hedlund star in the movie about a folk musician in New York City in the 1960s. The brothers aren’t going to rest and wait for that movie to hit, and have already started on a new project. That movie is not one the Coen Brothers plan to direct though, as they are just working as screenwriters on the project.
“Unbroken” is a World War II movie about Lou Zamperini. Angelina Jolie is directing the movie and reached out to hire the Coen Brothers to pen the script for her. The movie tells the story of Zamperini, a former Olympic track star whose Air Force plane crashes in the Pacific. He survived for 47 days in the ocean without food, surviving shark attacks, before finally washing up on an island. Unfortunately, the island is in Japanese territory and he ends up as a prisoner of war for two years.
This isn’t the first movie that the Coen Brothers wrote for another director. Here is a look at their other writing work.
“Crimewave”
When the Coen Brothers began working, they shared a house with a number of people, including Bruce Campbell, Frances McDormand, and Sam Raimi. The Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi helped each other early on. Raimi helped out with the Coen Brothers with their debut “Blood Simple,” while the Coen Brothers wrote the script for Sam Raimi’s follow up to “The Evil Dead.”
The movie was “Crimewave” and starred Bruce Campbell and Reed Birney. The film follows a death row inmate and shows how he ended up in the electric chair, convicted of a crime he never committed. The film has a strong sense of the Coen Brothers slapstick and dark humor, but is unlike anything Sam Raimi had made. It now remains an obscure cult film, especially for fans of Sam Raimi.
“Gambit”
In 1966, Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine starred in “Gambit,” a movie about a show girl and a cat burglar pull off a master robbery of a painting owned by the world’s richest man. The film, nominated for three Oscars, was released in 2012, written by the Coen Brothers and directed by Michael Hoffman (“The Last Station”). The new movie starred Cameron Diaz and Colin Firth, while Alan Rickman portrayed the man they stole the painting from.
Nowhere near as respected as the original, the remake underwhelmed and proved that maybe the Coen Brothers were better off directing their own material. Fans have to hope that “Unbroken” will be an exception to that rule.
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