Josh Brolin is back on the big screen in “Dune: Part Two,” his latest movie role since first playing Gurney Halleck for Denis Villeneuve in the 2021 film. And to commemorate his return, the actor sat down with Yahoo to talk about the highs and lows of his film career, including what’s arguably its nadir: the disastrous 2010 superhero flick “Jonah Hex.” Reviled by critics upon release, the film made back only $11 million of its $47 million budget at the box office, with Brolin and castmate Megan Fox receiving Razzie nods for their performances.
Brolin didn’t hold back in his assessment of the movie — “I think it was a piece of sh*t” he told Yahoo — but the actor doesn’t blame director Jimmy Hayward for its failure. Instead, Brolin conceded that studio interference made an already troubled production a complete trainwreck. In other words, Brolin knew while shooting “Jonah Hex” that it wouldn’t be very good, but further mishandling by studio execs guaranteed it would live in infamy.
“It’s funny because I’ve always spoken about it in a way that I think is disrespectful to the director. I don’t think it was the director’s fault, I think he did his best,” Brolin recalled. “I think it was a piece of sh*t film but for many different reasons, and I’m included in that too. But you know we can’t win them all, it happens.” Brolin stars in the film as the titular antihero, an ex-Confedate soldier-turned-bounty hunter out for revenge against the man who killed his family and left him for dead. Megan Fox co-stars as Hex’s love interest, a gun-wielding prostitute, while John Malkovich stars as villain Quentin Turnbull. A rising star Michael Fassbender also starred in the movie as Turnbull’s henchman, with Michael Shannon‘s part cut from the final film.
“I mean I brought in a lot of really good people,” Brolin continued. “I brought in Malkovich, I brought in Megan, I brought in Fassbender who hadn’t really hit yet —He’d done some great work, but he hadn’t really hit yet— I brought in Michael Shannon, but he was cut out.” But the film’s components never gelled together. “I don’t know what happened, but it happened, just careened a little bit, hit a couple cars, everybody survived. But I don’t think it was Jimmy Hayward’s fault, I think that’s a misconception. He was a big Jonah Hex fan, we gave him a shot.”
Brolin thinks attempts by Warner Bros. to salvage a film they had issues with tanked whatever merit Hayward’s direction brought to “Jonah Hex.” “He directed a pretty good movie and then the studio took it and made it a much worse movie,” the actor explained. “I’ve seen that happen a couple of times — once you get into pandering, what you think the audience wants based on a cosmetic understanding, or at least a pretend understanding, of what you think an audience wants, which nobody ever knows.” The result? A 12% consensus rating on Rotten Tomatoes, on part with 2024’s current laughingstock “Madame Web.”
It’s not as if “Jonah Hex” was going to be a major movie event in the first place. The character is a very minor one in the comic books, and based on its budget, Warner Bros. didn’t have much stock invested in the film’s success. Still, it’s an unfortunate spot for Hayward. His 2008 debut “Horton Hears A Who!” was a box office monster, making over three times its budget globally, assuring him a stable career. But after “Jonah Hax” failed so miserably, Hayward made only one other movie, 2013’s “Free Birds,” before exiting the industry for good.
As for Brolin, his experience on “Jonah Hex” makes him grateful to work on projects like “Dune: Part Two.” That’s why it’s good [there’s] people like [Denis Villeneuve] where you just do the movie that’s most powerful to you and then release it and hope for the best,” the actor said. Sure, but it also helps when a project has a cohesive vision before it hits production. As Brolin has noted in interviews over the years, “Jonah Hex” never had a clear direction, or the actor’s full commitment, despite his “really good intentions.” Maybe it’s best for Brolin to simply forget about “Jonah Hex,” like everyone else already has.
