The China Mail - Coen brothers say they plan to make film together again

Both of them have latterly turned to personal projects, working with their wives -- film editor Tricia Cooke and actress Frances McDormand -- on movies such as "Honey Don't" and the "The Tragedy of Macbeth".

But they said they planned to reunite soon behind the camera, joking that it had to come soon because of their advancing ages.

"We're getting old. It better be the near future," Joel, 71, told AFP in a joint interview ahead of a prize ceremony in the French city of Lyon where they are being given the "Lumiere" life-time achievement award.

"We have a number of different things in what we call the library, things that we've written before," he added. "And then other things that we've thought about writing scripts about and never gotten around. So we don't know yet."

He denied reports that "there's some kind of schism, that there's some kind of break that happened. In fact, it's not anything like that."

Their last film together was 2018's "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", an offbeat Oscar-nominated Western starring Tim Blake Nelson, which followed the 1950s Hollywood-set satirical comedy "Hail, Caesar!" in 2016.

Joel will release another solo project next year called "Jack of Spades" with Josh O'Connor, while Ethan has done a documentary about American pianist Jerry Lee Lewis as well as two other films with lesbian heroines.

- Not fantasy -

The brothers declined to given any details about what their next joint project would be, but is is unlikely to be fantasy-based.

"It's definitely some weird cultural thing where mainstream movies are now mostly fantasy: fantasy, science fiction, horror, comic books, all different kinds of fantasy," Ethan, 69, explained. "It's a sad thing for us because we've never been drawn to those kinds of things."

He also ruled out doing a TV series, despite serving as an executive producer on the long-running "Fargo" television adaptation.

"You have to sort of understand that structure in order to do it successfully. And it's just not what we do. It's not the way our brains think about stories," Joel explained.

M.Chau--ThChM