If the Coen brothers don't want to make a movie, then they don't make a movie. After all, the siblings have enough cache in the industry to do whatever they want, and they aren't the types to bend to the whims of a studio and be talked into directing something they have no interest in.
However, there was a film they never wanted to make, which they also had no interest in seeing come to fruition, that was made anyway. They didn't want anything to do with it, and technically they didn't, apart from giving their largely unenthusiastic blessing to a production that they'd been getting badgered about for years, which makes it sound like they did it to shut up the person doing the pestering.
Before they went their separate ways, the one thing Joel and Ethan could agree on was that returning to the well was at the bottom of their list of priorities. They'd occasionally talked about a Barton Fink sequel, and thanks to its enduring cult status, they were frequently peppered with questions regarding a potential Big Lebowski follow-up, largely because Jeff Bridges was on board with the idea.
Neither of those films happened, or they haven't anyway, but there's still a spinoff in the Coens' universe. John Turturro's Jesus Quintana was one of the many memorable supporting characters who populated The Big Lebowski, but he always came across as someone who worked better in smaller doses. Evidently, the actor disagreed.
Since the early 2000s, Turturro had constantly voiced his desire to make Jesus the subject of a standalone feature, but he couldn't do it without the Coens' blessing. It was a war of attrition, or apathy on their part, that raged in the background for over a decade, with the star revealing that "If I can get the permission I need, I'd like to return to that role."
He was the only person actively pushing for more Lebowski-adjacent stories, which sounded as though it got under the filmmakers' skin. "John Turturro, who wants it, talks to us incessantly about doing a sequel about his character, Jesus," Ethan explained. "He even has the story worked out, which he's pitched to us a few times, but I can't really remember it. No, I don't see it in our future."
They were right, since the brothers distanced themselves from The Jesus Rolls. Turturro was allowed to make it, and they were given the obligatory 'based on' credit for writing the Lebowski screenplay, but that was as far as their involvement went. Is it possible to make a Coen brothers movie without the Coen brothers? Based on the reception to the offshoot, no.
It was hardly an expensive picture at a fairly thrifty $4.5 million, but The Jesus Rolls still tanked thunderously at the box office, earning less than $65,000 from cinemas. It was also panned into oblivion by most critics, who asked the same question as any rational person would when the project was officially confirmed at long last: what exactly was the point of giving the lecherous bowling fiend his own film?
On the plus side, since it had absolutely nothing to do with the Coens, other than their disinterested green light for Turturro to go ahead and make the thing, it didn't leave a black mark on either their filmography or The Big Lebowski's reputation.