Netflix has snapped up a new movie filmed in Scotland and written by legends The Coen Brothers, which critics say has huge ‘Oscars’ potential.
The gothic mystery Jack of Spades is set in the Highlands in the 1880s and was directed and produced by Joel Coen, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Ethan, Irish playwright Conor McPherson and novelist Eleanor Catton.
It is the first time the Coen brothers have shared a writing credit since 2018.
The New Zealand author who won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries.
Filming took place last year in the north of Scotland as well as locations in Glasgow, Paisley, Edinburgh and Culross, Fife, and required Scottish streets to be transformed into a Victorian nightmare.
The 17th-century village of Culross is already a favourite with location scouts. It famously doubled for 18th-century Scotland in the TV time-travel saga Outlander.
The blockbuster deal will see the film – which stars Josh O’Connor, Damian Lewis, Frances McDormand and Lesley Manville – given a 2027 cinema release ahead of being made available to Netflix subscribers around the world.
The streamer calls it “a sinister gothic mystery filled with intrigue and betrayal”.
Coen’s last film, The Tragedy of Macbeth, starred Denzel Washington, and was Shakespeare’s Scottish play.
But it was made entirely on Hollywood soundstages. This time he came to film for several weeks from August 2025.
Jack of Spades is only the second film he has directed without his brother Ethan.
Together the pair made cult classics including Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men, which won them the Best Picture Oscar.
Josh O’Connor, who won an Emmy for playing Prince Charles in The Crown and starred in the tennis drama Challengers, plays the lead role.
Joining him are Oscar nominee Lesley Manville, Homeland star Damian Lewis and Olivier winner Patsy Ferran.
Frances McDormand, who has won three Best Actress Oscars and is married to the director, was also named in the cast during filming.
Coen brought his trusted team including Carter Burwell, who has scored almost every Coen film since their 1984 debut Blood Simple.
French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who shot Macbeth’s stark black-and-white images, is listed behind the camera.
Industry insiders saw a long cut of it last summer. American film site World of Reel reported that a 150-minute version shown to studios in August showed “immense promise”.
Those involved in the film have been tight-lipped about the plot and shoot.
In an interview with Irish actress Saoirse Ronan for culture magazine AnOther, O’Conner said: “I love Scotland. I used to go camping a lot on the west coast as a kid and still do now and we were quite close to where I used to go camping, up by Achiltibuie, just north of Ullapool.
“We were in three or four different towns on the west coast looking out onto Jura.
“Joel is great. He’s hilarious. I feel like half our job is understanding how to understand our director and what’s going on.
“For Joel, it was so difficult to know when he was happy because when he was not entirely happy with something he’d go, ‘Um OK’ which meant, that’s OK. The height of happiness for Joel is, “OK!” So really, it’s a fine line. I realised I was not going to be plied with praise the whole way through.”
He added: “He would give great notes. He’s just not an overly effusive person.”
Asked in an interview with British Vogue last year about Jack of Spades, Dublin-born McPherson said: “It’s done now, it’s wrapped, and we shot in Scotland.”
Netflix has worked with the Coens before. In 2018 it released their western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design.
The new deal is one of the first big moves by Netflix’s new content boss Peter Rice, the former Fox and Disney executive.
The film skipped this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Industry watchers now expect a premiere at Venice next September, ahead of its autumn release.
The deal is another boost for Scotland’s growing reputation as a film location.
In recent years Glasgow has stood in for Gotham City in The Batman and for New York in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Edinburgh, meanwhile, has hosted everything from Avengers: Infinity War to One Day and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
In September, 2025, Glasgow resident Shweta Jogalekar Samdadia filmed the Cochrane Street shoot from her window.
She said: “They were filming Jack of Spades right outside my home and it honestly felt like time travel.” And: “Seeing Joel Coen directing just a few metres from my door was unreal.”
The plot has been kept tightly under wraps, but the deal with Netflix ends months of Hollywood speculation over the film’s future.
The film, which wrapped production earlier this year, is thought to be loosely based on Frances Frederica Montrésor’s 1901 novel The Alien: A Story of Middle Age and is being described as “a sinister gothic mystery filled with intrigue and betrayal set in the atmospheric Scottish Highlands.”