Yahoo Movies Josh Brolin admits he’s been 'disrespectful' about Jonah Hex in the past
Reflecting on the 2010 film, the actor said 'the studio took it and made it a much worse movie'
When Jonah Hex was released in 2010 it was met with derision by critics and became a commercial flop, but even though he thinks the comic book adaptation was "s**t" star Josh Brolin tells Yahoo UK he has been to harsh on the project in the past.
The actor starred in the title role opposite big hitters like Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender and John Malkovich, but all the A-listers in the world couldn't save the Jimmy Hayward production mainly, according to Brolin, because of the studio messing with the director's vision.
"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 says as part of his Role Recall interview.
"I think it was a piece of s*** film but for many different reasons, and I'm included in that too. But you know we can't win them all, it happens.
"I mean I brought in a lot of really good people, I brought in [John] Malkovich, I brought in Megan [Fox], I brought in [Michael] 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."
Read more: Josh Brolin on Goonies 2, Jonah Hex and falling in love with Austin Butler on Dune
The film was panned so badly it even earned Brolin and Fox a joint Razzie nomination for Worst Screen Couple/Worst Screen Ensemble. But the actor prefers to look back on it with tongue-in-cheek humour.
"I don't know what happened, but it happened," he says. "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 admits he's been overly critical towards Hayward in the past when now he understands that it wasn't Hayward's fault, as he goes on: "He directed a pretty good movie and then the studio took it and made it a much worse movie.
"I've seen that happen a couple of times. Once you get into pandering, [into] 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.
"That's why it's good [there's] people like [Dune director Denis Villeneuve], where you just do the movie that's most powerful to you and then release it and hope for the best."
Watch: Josh Brolin looks back at the highs and lows of his career for Role Recall
