"Honey Don't!" Trailer: Ethan Coen's New Screwball Private-Eye Comedy Brings Murder, Mayhem, and Sex in the Small Town, Starring Margaret Qualley and Chris Evans

Qualley stars as a glamorous private eye digging into a dark mystery, with Evans playing a corrupt reverend in this offbeat crime caper.

Any fans of the Coen brothers who have been hoping they’d reunite for a new movie, well, the wait is... still going. Sorry.

While it’s been tough to see the Oscar-winning duo hasn’t made a movie together since 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Ethan Coen, on the other hand, is keeping himself busy. After completing his screwball crime caper Drive-Away Dolls last year, Ethan has quickly jumped back on the horse with the second installment of his supposed “lesbian B-movie trilogy,” titled Honey Don’t!.

Once again reuniting with his Drive-Away Dolls star Margaret Qualley, Ethan whips up another madcap detective romp. This time, Qualley plays small-town private eye Honey O’Donahue, whose "click-clacking heels" aren’t the only thing making noise as she dives headfirst into a whirlwind of mystery and mayhem.

Part glam-up fashionista, part hard-boiled sleuth, Honey always gets to the bottom of things, no matter how tangled the case may be. When investigating a mysterious woman whose body is found on the side of the road in a flipped-over crashed car, Honey uncovers a link to a local reverend whose sexual secrets may be more than just a minor scandal. While the local cops want to pin it as an accidental death, Honey keeps digging, uncovering clues that point to something much darker.

Is this a case of a lost girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or is she just an example of how secrets, when buried deep enough, can have deadly consequences?

Chris Evans co-stars as the charismatic reverend at the local church called the Four-way Temple. He just might be at the center of a murder cover-up... that is, when he’s not caught in the middle of a sexual three-way with two of his devotees. A preacher as corrupt as they come? Well, it seems Evans's character lives by the motto: preach what I say, and not what I do.

In addition to Qualley and Evans, the comedy features Aubrey Plaza as a local police officer and Charlie Day as a local homicide detective, with Billy Eichner, Talia Ryder, Kristen Connolly, and Don Swayze rounding out the cast.

Honey Don’t! also marks Ethan Coen’s second consecutive collaboration with Tricia Cooke, a film editor who has worked on several Coen brothers' films, including The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn't There, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Cooke co-wrote and co-produced the film, just as she did with Drive-Away Dolls. It seems she’s as much a creative partner as Ethan in this so-called lesbian B-movie trilogy they’ve come up with.

We should also add: Cooke is Ethan’s wife/partner. She’s a lesbian, and allegedly, she and Ethan have an open marriage. It’s a whole unconventional, non-traditional marriage situation. While it may feel like a personal matter, it makes more sense when you consider how these two films, Honey Don’t! and Drive-Away Dolls, feel a bit different from typical Coen brothers fare. There’s a bit of a trashy, sexually charged edge to them. Ethan and Cooke have publicly stated before that their unorthodox relationship has inspired their films together. So, there’s that.

Honey Don’t! is expected to make its world premiere this month at the Cannes Film Festival, during the midnight section. Following its debut, the film will arrive in theaters on August 22nd. Watch the film’s official trailer, above.