The 'True Grit' actor apologizes to his 'Jonah Hex' co-star for the 2010 movie's failure, slamming the director for not doing enough research and the studio for interfering too much.
- Apr 1, 2023
AceShowbiz - Josh Brolin suggests director Jimmy Hayward and studio interference were to blame for the failure of "Jonah Hex". The 52-year-old actor took on the lead role of the 2010 comic book movie, which was a critical and commercial flop, and he thinks he "still owes" his co-stars an apology because of what the film turned out to be, which he blames on the filmmaker going "out partying" instead of devoting all his time to the project.
"It was not successful creatively or monetarily. I mean, everybody knows how I feel about 'Jonah Hex'. But the biggest thing with 'Jonah Hex' is rushing into hiring somebody. I remember Jeff Robinov, who I'm still close with, who was running Warner Brothers at the time and he was like, 'look, you've got to get a director in the next two weeks, otherwise we've got to can this thing,' " he told Variety.
"And then you meet somebody who has a lot of knowledge, Jimmy Hayward, and I remember it didn't feel right. I loved that he was excited, but he just didn't have the experience and he didn't treat it like I would imagine somebody would want to treat it - to run back to their house at the end of their every day and watch tonal inspirations and Scorsese movies or this or that. He would be out partying instead."
"And not that I had a ton of pull then, but I brought in Megan [Fox,] who I thought was perfect for that role. Maybe not the best actress at that moment, but for that type of parody, forget it. Her, at that moment? You couldn't do better than that."
"And [Michael] Fassbender? One of our best actors, who had done 'Shame' and 'Hunger', are you kidding me? Malkovich, who had just been ripped off by Bernie Madoff, and we're asking him to do it for a third of his price. He said yes. I mean, f***, I still owe these people. Michael Shannon was in it, he was cut out..."
"So the intention was there, I just think we made a big mistake with the director - not to blame it all at him, because that was my choice, that was my bad choice."
Josh then hit out at Warner Bros. for getting involved and making the movie "worse." He continued, "And then the studio took it over and every time that's happened, in my experience, it has only gotten worse."
"They did it with 'Old Boy' with Spike Lee. I thought Spike's cut was actually way better than the studio's, but the studio took it away and I thought they'd cut it very poorly and I thought it ended up having the opposite effect."
"That's what happens when you start cutting to this idea of pandering for an audience, and how testing can bite you in the a**. You don't know what the audience is going to want. 'Jonah Hex' was them taking the movie back and saying, how can we make this the most accessible movie? And they ended up making the least accessible movie."
