Focus Features has slated Ethan Coen‘s dark comedy Honey Don’t! for an August 22nd theatrical release. The film stars Margaret Qualley as Honey O’Donahue, a small-town private investigator who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church. Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, Charlie Day, and Billy Eichner also star in the project.
Honey Don’t! will have its world premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in the Midnight Screenings section. In addition to helming the film, Coen also co-wrote the script with Tricia Cooke. It will be the second installment of the “lesbian B-movie trilogy,” which began with Coen and Cooke’s Drive-Away Dolls, which also starred Qualley.
While speaking with i-D, Qualley dropped a few details about her character, including that she had to hit the brakes on her “natural Scooby-Doo” inclinations so that she would “be a little more suave than I am, more mysterious. I tend to want to diffuse things before they even happen. [Whereas] Honey, she’s like honey — she’s skillful, she’s smooth, she is slipping in and out undetected.“
Qualley continued, “No girl needs to be taught how to be a detective. Women know what’s happening even when they don’t know what’s happening. I remember in my early twenties, especially, my investigative skills on Instagram were really out of control. It’s a combination of tools, craft, and gut instinct.” She added that she hasn’t read a script or been contacted for the final installment of the trilogy, but she made it known that if she’s not in it, “I will be offended and I will be upset.“
Drive-Away Dolls starred Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as two young women who take an unexpected road trip to Tallahassee and cross paths with a group of inept criminals. Unfortunately, our own Chris Bumbray didn’t love the movie, even saying it was a “bit of a dud” in his review. “The only positive thing about Drive Away Dolls is that Qualley and Viswanathan do their best with the material,” Bumbray wrote. “Qualley is tasked with delivering a very over-the-top (Coen-esque) performance as the ‘wacky’ Jamie and certainly seems game. You’ve never seen her like this before, and she deserves kudos for willing to be so ‘out there’ in her performance.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
