‘Honey, Don’t’s’ Ethan Coen And Tricia Cooke Set Their Sights On Lesbian Horror For Trilogy Finale
After a road trip comedy and a noir detective story, Coen and Cooke are diving into wilderness terror with queer women at the center.
Featured image: Ethan Coen, Aubrey Plaza, Margaret Qualley and Tricia Cooke attend ‘Honey Don’t’ Screening; Photo by Arturo Holmes/WireImage via Getty
Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s unexpected foray into lesbian B-movies has already given us a campy road trip comedy in Drive-Away Dolls and a sultry noir detective story in Honey Don’t! Now, the pair are turning their attention to the third and final chapter of what they’ve openly called their “lesbian genre trilogy.” This time, they’re headed into darker waters—literally.
On Deadline’s Crew Call podcast, the duo revealed that their next project will center on “a ten-year reunion of a women’s crew team. Wilderness. They, you know, row down the river, which is life. You get it?” Ethan explained. To which Cooke quickly added: “Yeah…meets horror movie.”
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It’s a fitting escalation. If the trilogy so far has been about letting queer women take the wheel in genres that rarely give them center stage, then a survival-horror riff about an all-female rowing team stranded in the wild feels like a thrilling conclusion.
Cooke has long said that part of the drive behind these films is the simple fact that there “aren’t enough lesbian genre movies.” Her approach has been to crack open well-worn cinematic traditions—like the screwball buddy road trip or the hardboiled detective mystery—and reimagine them with queer women at the heart of the story. The results, while uneven in critical reception, have been strange and more than a bit campy.
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Whether Margaret Qualley will continue her streak as the trilogy’s connective tissue remains an open question. She starred in Drive-Away Dolls and fronted Honey Don’t! as a seductive private eye. Ethan Coen joked that “Margaret’s going to be too old by the time we get to it, [but] we’ll find a part for [her].” Given her presence in the first two films, it’s hard to imagine a finale without her—whether she’s leading the boat or lurking in the shadows as a villain.
Still, the timeline is uncertain. With Joel Coen currently at work on Jack of Spades and talk of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen reuniting on another project, Joel and Cooke’s horror outing could take longer to materialize.
For now, Honey Don’t! is making its way into theaters, promising sleaze, cults, and Chris Evans as a deranged preacher. But lesbian audiences already have one eye on the river ahead, waiting for the day Coen and Cooke send their women’s crew into the woods to row against whatever lurks in the dark.
