The Coen brothers' next film will be a remake of True Grit, the 1969 western which won John Wayne his only Oscar, Variety reports.

The original movie was a star vehicle for the Duke, but the Coens are said to be planning a version closer to Charles Portis's 1968 novel, told from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl who hires a grizzled gunman to help find her father's killer.

The film-making siblings, who have just completed the black comedy A Serious Man, are fitting in True Grit before their planned adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

The original True Grit spawned two sequels: 1975's Rooster Cogburn, in which Wayne reprised his role as the eponymous US marshal, and the made-for-TV 1978 follow-up True Grit: A Further Adventure, which starred Warren Oates as the one-eyed law man.

Wayne is said to have called Marguerite Roberts' script for the original film "the best [he'd] ever read".