Buoyed by last month's quadruple Oscar win for No Country For Old Men, Hollywood top brass have prodded the multi-garlanded film-makers Joel and Ethan Coen back on to the awards season carousel.
Burn After Reading, a darkly comic account of a CIA agent who loses his unpublished memoirs, stars Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and George Clooney, who teamed up with the Coens on O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty.

Fans will have to wait six months before they see the brothers' film, however, since the distributor Focus Features fancies its chances in the 81st annual Academy Awards next year and has chosen to release the film in the awards season gateway month of September.
Many studios have already plotted the release of their early contenders in the 81st annual Academy Awards - and the Coens aren't the only ones who'll get a second crack at the big prizes.

Keira Knightley missed out on an Oscar nomination for Atonement and is already being positioned as a potential nominee in 2009 for her role as the outspoken 18th century Duchess of Devonshire opposite Ralph Fiennes in The Duchess.