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Tom Waits Cast In Coen Brothers’ The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

Tom Waits

Musician Tom Waits addresses an audience after he and his wife musician Kathleen Brennan were presented with the PEN New England’s Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award during ceremonies at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, in Boston. Waits, his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and folk singer John Prine were presented with the award during ceremonies Monday. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

|AP Photo/Steven Senne

Tom Waits has been cast in Joel and Ethan Coen's upcoming movie The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs. Variety reports that the project, which was first announced last year as a Netflix original series featuring six tales about the American frontier, has since evolved into a 132-minute feature film with a chaptered anthology structure.

"We've always loved anthology movies, especially those films made in Italy in the Sixties which set side-by-side the work of different directors on a common theme," the Coens brothers say in a statement. "Having written an anthology of Western stories we attempted to do the same, hoping to enlist the best directors working today. It was our great fortune that they both agreed to participate."

In addition to Waits, Tim Blake Nelson stars as the eponymous Buster Scruggs, and the rest of the cast includes Zoe Kazan and Liam Neeson. The film, which will be the Coens' first-ever digital photography production, is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month and will hit Netflix by the end of the year. Waits also has a role in The Old Man And The Gun, which opens 9/28.

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