News about Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a six-part Western series, has been dribbling out for months. Back in January, some reports suggested the Coens and Annapurna Television might pursue a hybrid distribution strategy including both theatrical and broadcast components, but now Netflix has announced it will premiere the series exclusively around the world.
“We are streaming motherfuckers!” the Coens said in a statement release by Netflix.
The Netflix announcement says that Ballad will feature “six tales about the American frontier,” and that it will be a limited anthology series, although the casting of Tim Blake Nelson as Buster suggests there may be some thread linking the tales together. James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, Stephen Root, and Ralph Ineson have also been reported to be part of the cast.
The timing of Netflix’s announcement is modestly noteworthy, as the news was released just in the middle of FX’s session at the Television Critics Association summer press tour—FX being the home of the anthology series inspired by the Coens’ Fargo. FX chief Jon Landgraf traditionally uses TCAs as a platform for an annual address on the state of the TV industry, which often includes taking shots at Netflix and Amazon. This year, Netflix decided to fire back.
