Coens adaptating another Pulitzer Prize novel...

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

If you can't get excited over a Coen Brothers picture, then I have to wonder what it would take to get that cinematic blood pumping through your veins. Variety say that The Coens will adapt their second Pulitzer Prize winning novel with Michel Chabon's novel THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION (name change needed!) for Columbia Pictures. The last time they adapted a Pulitzer Prize novel they ended up with their most financially successful movie and tons of Academy Award Noms with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

Chabon sets up a contemporary scenario where Jewish settlers are about to be displaced by U.S. government's plans to turn the frozen locale of Sitka, Alaska, over to Alaskan natives. Against this backdrop is a noir-style murder mystery in which a rogue cop investigates the killing of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who might be the messiah.

Sounds perfect for the Coens. Before we get to see this cool sounding project, we will be privileged to see the CIA comedy/thriller BURN AFTER READING which is due out in September with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich starring. After READING, they will move straight onto A SERIOUS MAN, a dark comedy about a Jewish college professor in the Midwest in 1967 who begins to question the value of life when he discovers his wife wants a divorce. Then probably this Chabon adaptation. Guess that violent Spaghetti Western will have to wait... but hell this project sounds awesome.