Earlier this year, Joel and Ethan Coen, better known as the Coen Brothers (and never known as the Coen Bros), announced that they were working on a project for television. All we knew then was that the show is called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and that it wasn’t attached to a network. But on Wednesday, the Coens proudly declared, “We are streaming motherf*ckers.” (No, really, that’s in the actual press release. They’re the best.)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a new Netflix original project to be written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and produced by Annapurna Television, is coming in 2018 for Netflix members around the world. The Western anthology will feature six tales about the American frontier… Each chapter will feature a distinct story about the American West.
The anthology series, which the Coens are slated to write and direct every episode of, will star Tim Blake Nelson, who previously worked with the brothers in O Brother, Where Art Thou? No other casting information has been revealed yet, but assume John Goodman is involved, somehow.
“The Coens are visionary directors, masterful storytellers, and colorful linguists,” said Netflix’s vice president of original content, Cindy Holland. “We are thrilled for Netflix to become home to the full range of their talents.”
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is the latest shot fired in the FX vs. Netflix war. FX coins the term “peak TV”; Netflix thinks “there’s no such thing as too much TV.” FX says “our shows are better” and “the average quality of the shows they put out is not as good as ours”; Netflix continues to flood the market and gets 91 Emmy nominations compared to FX’s 55. FX airs a (fantastic) show inspired by a Coen Brothers movie; Netflix gets the actual Coen Brothers.
The race is already on for a Frances McDormand/Steve Buscemi project.
