We could go on and on about the bad buzz surrounding the supernatural western “Jonah Hex,” but, well, you could also make us a grilled cheese sandwich, so let’s sit on our hands here. Warner Bros. seems to have heard the movie-nerd contingent wondering why “Jonah Hex” hasn’t shown the goodies, a trailer, footage or any real advertisement about the movie being kept under wraps with only two months before it’s set to hit theaters. Breaking an odd and very long silence about the $122 million budgeted comic adaptation (though some claim its much closer to $50m), the studio has leaked a new photo of the scarred bounty hunter hero played by Josh Brolin. They have also confirmed that, yes, the June 18th release date, which pits the film against “Toy Story 3,” is real.
WB has also finally announced when the first (and last?) trailer for the film will surface, first on the SyFy Channel on April 29th, and then on prints of “A Nightmare On Elm Street” the following day. Last summer, the film showed off a sizzle reel at Comic Con, but that was before the early 2010 reshoots that reshaped entire sequences wholesale. Believe it or not, now the movie’s about a billionaire superhero who fights Mickey Rourke.
While the on-set complications and behind-the-camera talent doesn’t really sway us to see this, it is interesting to see big studios awkwardly do the song and dance required of all big budget films. Do there really need to be multiple trailers up until a movie’s release? Are film fans really just holding out dollar bills, looking to stuff them down the g-string of the most desperate ad campaign? ‘Hex’ features a protagonist with over-the-top scarring, an element that will probably require CGI work — is it a stretch to say this element is unfinished, and therefore footage just isn’t fully ready (yet) for a non-Comic Con audience? Also why go to the trouble of leaking a photo and still not updating the official Facebook page and website? This is either going to be the biggest blitzkrieg of an ad campaign ever or the most obvious dumping of a tentpole movie in recent memory. We’re willing to be optimists until that first trailer surfaces, but if the film looks even remotely flawed, the geek chorus will be louder than ever.