“The Dog Stars” sees veteran genre filmmaker Ridley Scott FINALLY exploring a post-apocalypse story after nearly tackling it in the 1990s with his early version of “I Am Legend” with Arnold Schwarzenegger (some of the fantastic practical makeup test photos for the mutant vampires are very impressive and make one lament the Will Smith version opting for CGI constructs). The film sees Scott reuniting with actor Josh Brolin (“Weapons,” “Dune: Part Three”) after the two worked together on the crime epic “American Gangster” (Brolin played a dirty NYPD cop), and he plays one of the survivors, Bruce Bangley, trying to hold on to a version of society in that dangerous landscape.
Speaking with Empire Magazine, Brolin reveals that he almost quit the new 20th Century Studios movie on day one and explains that if came off like a dangerous set with what seemed like a distracted Scott, which was partly why he wasn’t entirely comfortable with what was going on due to a lack of communication from the seasoned filmmaker to his actor (leading to him getting the vibe he’d have to find a way out of the project and event contacted his agent).
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Here’s how Brolin tells those events and how Scott eventually calmed him down as the two got on the same page: “Ridley was talking a lot of stories and not really rehearsing, and it bugged me out, and I got really scared. I went back, called my agent, and said, ‘I want out. Something’s really wrong, and I’ve got to get the f*** out of here.’ Luckily, my agent is a close friend, and he said, ‘Rest for a day.’ I was like, ‘No, man, I know what the f*** you’re doing. It’s not one of those day-things.’And I was right…[Ridley] goes, ‘Come here,’ and he brought me into his trailer, and played the scene we had just finished,’ Brolin told Empire about his dust up with the veteran filmmaker. “It was a really good, very dynamic scene between me and Jacob, and he goes, ‘Okay?’ I go, ‘Okay,’ and then I started to feed off that..It took about a day or two for me to really embrace that, and then I got super into it because it was stratospherically creative and stratospherically dangerous. It was like, ‘This is what I’ve been asking for, but now I’m getting it, I’m fighting it, because there’s zero comfort in it.’ It became one of the more creative, satisfying projects that I’ve ever been involved with.”
Mind you, there is a lot more action with weapons work, gunfire, explosions, and extreme stunts going on than the trailers alone might be telegraphing, specifically for Brolin’s character (communication and trust with all those safety wheels moving are key). However, the two eventually found their stride together, and Brolin ended up appreciating the creative experience onward.
An adaptation of the Peter Heller novel with a script penned by Mark L. Smith, Scott has previously stated he wasn’t interested in doing another “zombie” action-horror film (likely alluding to the “28 Days/Years” franchise and “The Last of Us” series) within the revival of post-apocalypse films in the last three decades. So, we’ll see how Scott wants to separate his version from other projects, as it looks like it has more of a “Mad Max” kind of threat with folks outside their survivor colony being a pack of armed but feral raiders.
Audiences won’t have to wait too much longer before “The Dog Stars” (also features Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pierce, Benedict Wong, and Allison Janney among the cast) heads into theaters this summer on August 28.
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