Josh Brolin loves playing an idiot for Joel and Ethan Coen, so it should come as no surprise that the newly named Avengers villain has signed on with George Clooney to star in Hail Caesar! Just to be clear Hail Caesar! is an original project written by the Coens, not a remake of the 1994 film starring Anthony Michael Hall. That really didn’t need to be said, but I wanted to mention the existence of a film that features a man working at a pencil eraser factory.
The Coens describe the film as being “about the movie business and religion and faith,” but Deadline elaborates, adding the film centers around “a fixer in Hollywood circa 1950s who works for the studios to protect the stars of the day. Entitled Hail Caesar, the comical yarn centers on a man named Eddie Mannix who sounds a lot like the Fred Otash of his day — the famed 1950s private investigator who worked for Confidential magazine and was the muckraker of the time using wiretaps to spy on movie stars and gather dirt. Otash was a former lifeguard who became a cop, lost his job as a cop and became a private eye who wiretapped.”
At this point of their careers the Coen Brothers could make a movie on just about anything and I would gladly wait in line to see it without even a synopsis. The prospect of Joel and Ethan Coen rounding out their idiot trilogy (O Brother Where Art Thou, Burn After Reading) is an appetizing one, and made doubly anticipated with the addition of Brolin to the cast.
Hail Caesar will be distributed by Universal Pictures. It’s release date is TBA.
Source: Deadline
