Josh Brolin has not minced words about his disappointment in Jonah Hex, the 2010 adaptation which made $10 million worldwide on a budget of about $80 million. Seriously, how did they screw up a movie with Megan Fox in a corset, John Malkovich malkovich-ing all over the place, Josh Brolin in the wild west (where someone who looks like Josh Brolin absolutely belongs), Michael Fassbender with a face tattoo, and a horse with a Gatling gun?
While some would call the movie stupid fun, Brolin has repeatedly bashed it. In the past, he’s placed blame both on the director and on how the film was promoted. In a new interview with Nerdist (audio below), Brolin explains what went wrong in even more detail, and hoo boy, does this sound like it was a difficult project.
When the Nerdist hosts complimented Brolin on speaking honestly about his films, he seemed to know exactly what they meant, saying, “Oh, Jonah Hex, hated it. Hated it.”
He then went deep into the problems on set, like reshooting sixty-six pages of script changes in twelve days. The Playlist offers a transcript:
“Listen, I understand it’s financiers, you’re trying to save their money and it becomes a financial thing, but if — there’s this thing called revenge trading. And I’m disciplined enough to know you never do it. But with Jonah Hex, if I had $5 million — which is always how I saw that movie. I remember when I was talking to Warner Bros. about doing that movie, High Plains Drifter is what I put on the TV, I said, ‘That’s what I wanna do.’ I would do that movie still. If I ever had the balls to spend $5 million, which I don’t, I would do that movie, ’cause that’s the version of that movie that would have been successful, for sure. And it didn’t need to cost anything more than $8-$10 million.”
Brolin’s side of the story has stayed consistent over the years. He thought it should have been a fun low-budget movie, and he was wary about the direction and promotion of the project. It’s also not the first time he’s said he wishes he could remake it. Back in 2014, he said, “If I’m ever really rich, I’ll do that movie again.”
Brolin may not be remaking Jonah Hex any time soon, but don’t count the character out. Hex will be coming to the small screen on Legends of Tomorrow, as played by the buff-looking Johnathon Schaech. No word on if The CW can afford horse-mounted Gatling guns.
https://soundcloud.com/the-nerdist/josh-brolin
(Via Nerdist and The Playlist)
