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EXCLUSIVE: When you have eight Oscars between you, it becomes less daunting to take on Shakespeare. I’m told that Denzel Washington is in early talks to team with Frances McDormand in a screen adaptation of Macbeth that will be directed by Joel Coen, from an adaptation he is writing. Scott Rudin is producing, and the plan is for A24 to distribute worldwide.

The Shakespeare classic was first turned into a film by Orson Welles in 1948 and numerous adaptations have followed. The storyline is that a Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he is destined to become king of Scotland. With the help of his ambitious wife, he does what he has to with the goal of seizing the crown. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard starred in the last version, directed by Justin Kurzel.

Washington won his Oscars for Training Day and Glory, while McDormand won for Fargo and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Coen won his for No Country For Old Men and Fargo.

Washington is repped by WME, Coen and McDormand are at UTA.

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Newcomer Moses Ingram has been cast alongside Denzel Washington and Corey Hawkins in Joel Coen‘s adaptation of William Shakespeare‘s Macbeth, Collider has exclusively learned.

Washington will play the title character, while two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand will co-star as Lady Macbeth. Elsewhere, Hawkins will play Macduff, and Emmy winner Brendan Gleeson will play King Duncan in the A24 movie, which is being produced by Scott Rudin. Coen is directing from his own original screenplay, and Macbeth will mark his first time not working alongside his brother, Ethan Coen, with whom he shares four Oscars. Production is slated to start in the coming weeks.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth follows a general (Washington) who’s convinced by a trio of witches that he’s destined to become the king of Scotland. With the help of his ambitious wife (McDormand), Macbeth tries to seize the crown by any means necessary.

Ingram will play Lady Macduff, who appeared in just a single scene in Shakespeare’s original tale before being killed offstage, though other adaptations have expanded the role as a foil to Lady Macbeth. We’ll have to wait and see how Coen employs the character.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Coen fills out this cast, as Banquo is still a notable role, and I’ve heard some interesting names who read for the three witches, including Joker star Zazie Beetz.

Ingram will soon be seen alongside Anya Taylor-Joy in Scott Frank‘s new Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. She attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, and in 2015, she won a theater award from the National Society of Arts and Letters. She’s represented by Authentic Talent and Literary Management and Innovative Artists, who did not respond to multiple inquiries.

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Apple Original Films and A24 are partnering up to release Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, which will be released in theaters worldwide ahead of a global launch on Apple TV+.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a black-and-white adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Scottish play starring Washington as the ambitious Macbeth and McDormand as his power-hungry wife Lady Macbeth. The names behind the movie have already set The Tragedy of Macbeth up to be a major awards contender. It’s directed by Joel Coen, striking out on his own for the first time. It stars Oscar winner Washington and McDormand, fresh off her memorable Oscar win for Nomadland. The film will be shot in black-and-white, courtesy of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. And though it’s one of many in a long line of Macbeth adaptations, it looks to be a new and exciting take, with McDormand hinting that her and Washington’s ages will factor into the adaptation.

“I think a very important thing about Joel’s adaptation is that we are not calling it Macbeth,” McDormand said in a previous interview. “We’re calling it The Tragedy of Macbeth, which I think is an important distinction. In Joel’s adaptation, we are exploring the age of the characters and in our adaptation, the Macbeths are older. Both Denzel and I are older than what is often cast as the Macbeths. We’re postmenopausal, we’re past childbearing age. So that puts a pressure on their ambition to have the crown. I think the most important distinction is that it is their last chance for glory.”

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Film at Lincoln Center announces Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth as Opening Night of the 59th New York Film Festival, making its World Premiere at Alice Tully Hall on September 24.

A work of stark chiaroscuro and incantatory rage, Joel Coen’s boldly inventive visualization of The Scottish Play is an anguished film that stares, mouth agape, at a sorrowful world undone by blind greed and thoughtless ambition. In meticulously world-weary performances, a strikingly inward Denzel Washington is the man who would be king, and an effortlessly Machiavellian Frances McDormand is his Lady, a couple driven to political assassination—and deranged by guilt—after the cunning prognostications of a trio of “weird sisters” (a virtuoso physical inhabitation by Kathryn Hunter). Though it echoes the forbidding visual designs—and aspect ratios—of Laurence Olivier’s classic 1940s Shakespeare adaptations, as well as the bloody medieval madness of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Coen’s tale of sound and fury is entirely his own—and undoubtedly one for our moment, a frightening depiction of amoral political power-grabbing that, like its hero, ruthlessly barrels ahead into the inferno. An Apple/A24 release.

“The New York Film Festival is a place where I’ve been watching movies as an audience member and showing them as a filmmaker for almost 50 years,” said director Joel Coen. “It’s a real privilege and a thrill to be opening the Festival this year with The Tragedy of. . .”

“We can’t wait to welcome New York Film Festival audiences back to Lincoln Center this fall, and what a way to do that!” said Eugene Hernandez, Director of the New York Film Festival. “With Joel Coen, Frances McDormand, Denzel Washington, and our friends at Apple and A24 on Opening Night at Alice Tully Hall, we’re setting the stage for a momentous return to our roots. Last year was a deeply meaningful edition of NYFF; our Festival traveled to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and around the country via our Virtual Cinema. This year we’re back in our Upper West Side home, but you’ll also find us exploring new venues and ways to connect with moviegoers in person, outdoors, and online—stay tuned!”

“We’re proud to open the festival with a film that immediately joins the ranks of the great screen Shakespeares,” said Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for the New York Film Festival. “Working with brilliant collaborators, including Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in stunning form, Joel Coen has made an inspired and urgent interpretation of an eternally relevant classic, a moral thriller that speaks directly to our time.”

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Following The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the brothers split ways with Joel Coen adapting Shakespeare for the forthcoming The Tragedy of Macbeth and Ethan Coen taking a break from filmmaking to work on plays. Now, it looks like a reunion may not be in the works anytime soon.

“Ethan just didn’t want to make movies anymore,” longtime collaborator Carter Burwell told the podcast Score (via LA Mag). “Ethan seems to be very happy doing what he’s doing, and I’m not sure what Joel will do after [Macbeth],” the composer added, while also noting the brothers have “a ton of” unproduced scripts sitting on the shelves.

“I hope maybe they get back to some of those because I’ve read some and they’re great,” Burwell said. “But I don’t know. We’re all at an age where we could retire, but I don’t think that’s exactly what’s going to happen. It’s a wonderfully unpredictable business.”

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