For decades, Joel and Ethan Coen operated like one brain split between two people, and were synonymous with razor-sharp dialogue and dark comedy, creating some of the best characters in the most memorable American films of the last half-century, like Fargo , The Big Lebowski , and No Country for Old Men . When the brothers stopped making movies as a duo after 2018’s untraditional western The Ballad of Buster Scrugg s , fans assumed something big must have happened behind the scenes. But according to Ethan Coen, the real reason for the brothers’ split is far less dramatic.

Promoting his 2025 movie release , the hardboiled detective riff Honey Don’t , in an interview with Collider alongside his wife and collaborator Tricia Cooke, Ethan Coen set the record straight,

See Full Page