Josh Brolin Opens Up About How JONAH HEX Fell Apart - "We Made a Big Mistake"

Josh Brolin’s 2010 adaptation of Jonah Hex should have been so much better than it ended up being. I remember being excited about the movie before it was released because I’m a fan of the western genre and Jonah Hex. Unfortunately, the movie turned out to be a huge disappointment for fans.

Brolin himself was not a fan of the movie, and it’s a project that he very much regrets. He brought a lot of talented people onto that project but ultimately the biggest mistake he made was the director they hired to helm the film, Jimmy Hayward.

During a recent interview with Variety, Brolin looked back on the film and how it was such a big mistake, and how he still owes everyone that he brought on to be a part of it.

"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. And then you meet somebody who has a lot of knowledge, [director] 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 [Martin] Scorsese movies or this or that. He would be out partying instead." 

Jonah Hex was Hayward’s first film, and unfortunately, it sounds like he didn’t take the opportunity seriously and squandered it. Brolin when on to say:

"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-ck, I still owe these people. Michael Shannon was in it, he was cut out. We just asked Michael to do George and Tammy because I pulled out of it, and he took my place and was amazing in it. 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."

It’s a shame that things ended up the way they did with Jonah Hex. It deserved to be so much better! Brolin went on to talk about his Old Boy remake and how that was another disappointment that he feels is due to studio interference:

"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 ass. 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."

The Jonah Hex character was eventually played with again in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but there’s a badass character there that could carry his own film or series if done right.