We watched the movie again and we thought, Well, you know, we could do something with this... 
Joel Coen, along with his brother Ethan, has brought to the screen some of the most memorable films of the last 20 years. Here he talks about their latest outing, a remake of the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks.
The Ladykillers is a remake. Are there any other films you'd remake?
Well, Intolerable Cruelty was not a remake, but it wasn't from a story that we originated. The Ladykillers is one we wrote for Barry Sonnenfeld to direct and for various reasons he decided to produce it instead and we ended up directing it, so they both started as writing jobs. The next one we do will probably be from our own story and we'll be approaching it much more in the way we have approached our previous work.
Does it make it very different, adapting a screenplay when you are going to direct?
Frankly, it's easier because you have a template you are working from. It's different because there is an element you are not making up and then the other aspect is that when we are writing for other people, as we did initially on these other movies, we don't usually write with specific actors in mind for specific characters because we don't know who they are going to cast in the part. It's just a little different if we are writing knowing that we will direct. Frequently we are writing characters and we are thinking, Wouldn't it be interesting to see such and such play this kind of a person, and the character starts to grow out of that as you are writing it. It's a combination of things that you are making up and what you know about the actor.
What made you choose The Ladykillers?
We didn't really choose it. It came to us as a writing assignment and Barry said, "You know the movie is owned by Disney, I want to direct it, will you guys write a screenplay?" We watched the movie again and we'd seen it before and liked it and we thought, Well, you know, we could do something with this... It's about a group of misfit criminals who come down and perpetrate a heist, it has a central irony at the end of the movie about who survives, it's got this sort of dark comedy feel, but we saw a way we could change the Katie Johnson character from the original into something that we would be interested in writing about. So we saw all of those things and said, "Yeah, OK, we'll write it."
Do you like the Ealing comedies?
Very much so. I like The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts And Coronets, lots of them. I think we probably first saw them on the television when we were kids. They stayed with us.
Was Tom Hanks involved in the project from the start?
No.
Did you have Tom in mind?
No. Only when we decided to direct it and we started thinking about who might play that part.
Was he your first choice?
Yeah, because he is somebody that we had been interested in for a while for other reasons. We had talked to him about doing something at some point, and we thought that The Ladykillers was an interesting opportunity and not something we had really seen before in terms of what he does.
How easy or difficult was it to work with Disney?
It was no different for us. We worked no differently with Disney than we did with other companies - we've made films with Working Title, PolyGram, lots of other companies. It was absolutely fine and they left us alone. We made O Brother with Disney and it was the same people, Nina Jacobson and Dick Cook. And when we do a movie with the studios, they kind of know, the studios wouldn't be asking us to do it, I don't think, if it was a movie they wanted to get into themselves. What you see is what you get with us, so they let us do what we want to do.
You said before that the film cost nearly $40 million. How easy or difficult is it to work in that budget range?
Well, it wasn't a particularly complicated movie from a production point of view. We built most of the sets, and the only thing that was complicated was the bridge because it doesn't exist anywhere, it's all done on a set or with miniatures or CGI.
Tom was saying that he still hasn't seen the original. How did you treat the original?
I was surprised he hadn't seen it when we brought him the project and I was sort of expecting him to watch it. When it became clear he wasn't going to, then I kind of realised, Well, that's very smart actually... Because there is absolutely nothing to be gained once you have committed to doing that part, and so it was interesting. As far as we were concerned, we took from the original what we were interested in and didn't have any problem changing everything else.
Do you think you have changed now you are working with big stars like Tom Hanks and George Clooney?
I don't know, the distinction between working with big stars or not is kind of an artificial one for us. I mean with Tom, the reason we were really interested in working with him was not because he is a big star - because, frankly, it was not the kind of movie that needed a big star, to get it financed, for instance. We are always looking for actors who can carry a movie as a leading role but who are also essentially character actors - whether they are John Turturro or whether it's George Clooney or Billy Bob Thornton. If they are essentially character actors but they also have the ability to be the centre of a film, then we are interested in them, and we don't care whether they are stars or not. And there are only certain kinds of stars who can do that. Other kinds of movie stars, it's a different thing, they bring their persona to the part and that's what people like to see and they are not really transforming in terms of their character.
What is the advantage of working with the same actors as you often do?
Well we work with not only the same actors many times but you know, the creative people and technicians over and over again. We have worked with Roger Deakins [director of photography] for 13 years and Dennis Gassner, our designer, for 15 years. You find collaborators that you are particularly comfortable with and you have a very productive relationship with, and we like that. We have always worked with the same people...
Do you know what you are making next?
No, we're just writing now and we'll see.
Do you ever test screen films?
We've test screened only a couple of things we've made. I mean, generally speaking it's not particularly helpful with our movies. You know some movies it's more so than others, and that includes the stuff we do. If you are doing a flat-out comedy it can be useful to see what is coming across to an audience. In other kinds of movies there is just no point in test screening it. There's no point in test screening Barton Fink or The Man Who Wasn't There. What are you going to find out? Other ones that are a little bit more overtly comedies, then you can.
