Jonah Hex on the Big Screen

More in Jonah Hex pool

The smoke signals came all at once back in mid 2007 regarding a Jonah Hex Film, started of by an item at Hollywoodreporter.com which stated ... film makers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor on board to adapt. Andrew Lazar is producing via his Mad Chance Prods., as is Akiva Goldsman.

Latinoreview has a review of the script, and collider.com has Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor in exclusive video interviews from Wizard World.

In an interview with the film makers during Comic-Con ..Neveldine confirmed that they have completed a first draft and "we're really excited about (the project)." He revealed that their take on the Western bounty hunter will be influenced by "the [Joe R.] Lansdale series, definitely. The movie that we're -- we've pretty much wrote it -- but we're writing is going to be the introduction to Jonah Hex. So we're incorporating a lot of stuff but we're bringing in, of course, Quentin Turnbull. It's almost like a double revenge story. They're both justified in their own revenge. That's what's so great about Jonah Hex in this movie. And again we get to play with an anti-hero." Rep orts in April 2008 indicate the script has been finished. IMDB lists a release date in 2010.

This might be connected to the 104-page first draft of a script by William Farmer (dated January 13th, 1997) that was reviewed a few years back by The Stax Report, as Andrew Lezar was rumoured to be connected to it at the time. There was also talk of a TV series that went to development hell.

Variety reported in late November 08 that Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor had dropped out as directors of the film due to "creative differences". Storyboards from their time on the project, illustrated by Martin Mercer, can be seen on their website...

The producers were then looking for a replacment, with the director of the Punisher: War Zone - Lexi Alexander - mentioning that she was one of several prospective directors reading the script at the beginning of December.

In early January 2009 the hollywoodreporter.com announced that Jimmy Hayward, who directed the animated Horton Hears a Who!, will make his live-action debut on Jonah Hex.

According to an an interview with Brolin at collider.com Brolin was contacted by Hayward via e-mail with a pitch, which lead to a face to face meeting and eventually to Brolin suggesting Hayward as director to the studio.

In February 2009 it was reported that John Malkovich had taken on the role of villain Quentin Turnbull, the wealthy Southern plantation owner as in comics who falsely blames Hex for the death of his son.

In early March Empire Magazine reported that Megan Fox ...will take a supporting role in the Jimmy Hayward-directed movie as Leila, a gunslinger who provides the love interest for Josh Brolin's scarred bounty hunter. John Malkovich will play a voodoo priest who wants to raise an army of the undead with a view to liberating the South. more...

Photographs of Megan Fox dressed as a salon girl drew some attention in April 2009. In an interview in May she described the film as ...a post Civil War apocalyptic type of situation about this cowboy who has the ability to talk to dead people. more...

Comicbookmovie.com reported that production workers spent about three weeks building a unique boat in the waters off Bayou Gauche, and filming took place from May 11 to May 15.

Filming took place at Fort Pike for two months in May and June, with the production team helping the museum with its long post Katrina repairs by donating some of the set props and painting the interior, the sally port and the citadel for them.

By the time of the Comic Con press convererence the Director was at pains to combat the idea that the film would have a supernatural focus...

I don't know where the voodoo practitioner raising the army of the undead came from, but that has nothing to do with the film. John Malkovich's character is more of a terrorist who's upset about the Civil War than he is someone who's trying to fight and re-win the Civil War.

I think Jonah Hex, he's been shot so many times, the legend is he's got one foot in the grave and one foot here on Earth, and so we approach it by everybody else's version of who Jonah Hex is.

Some Comic-con Interviews

Megan Fox origianlly did just 5 days work on the film, but from comments made at Comic-Con it appears she was called back for re-shoots.

Three time World Championship Gunslinger Joey Dillon, who did the gun and tomahawk training and gun consultation to Josh Brolin as well Gun handler for Megan Fox for reshoot dates, was interviewed by True West magazine.

Mark Neveldine comments on how the script developed after he and Brian Taylor left the project We wrote Jonah Hex and we had a blast with it. And I read the final shooting script and felt like there was about 85% of our script, and that was pretty cool. Some of the things that we lost, unfortunately, worked: some of the dialogue, and some bits. They went PG-13 instead of Rated-R; probably the best thing to do, I guess, for a movie that doesn't have a big audience.

Late December 2009 saw the anouncement that another few weeks of reshoots were planned in early 2010, with Francis Lawrence - the director of I Am Legend and Constantine - consulting. Soon afterwards a casting call was released indicating an intention to fleshout Jonah's backstory:

• Cassie - wife of 'Jonah Hex' (Josh Brolin). Native American. Pretty, young, sexy.
• Travis - age 9 (to play younger)... Must be a match to Josh Brolin and Native American 'Cassie'.
• Jeb Turnbull - son of 'Quentin Turnbull' (John Malkovich). 30 - 35. Skinny, southern accent. Needs one or two days for prosthetics.
• President Andrew Johnson - 50-60. Look alike, if possible.
• Advisor - to President Johnson. Younger, 1870's version of a "West Wing" character.
• Dead Guy - late 20s/30s. Scary looking.. May need a day for prosthetics/possible make-up.

Heat Vision reported in early 2010 that Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox and Michael Fassbender would be called back for roughly 10-days shooting in the Los Angeles area during late January, and that although no test screenings had taken place, the studio decided to work on story and action during the shoots, with additional script (reports range from 12 to in excess of 50 pages worth of new material) mixed in with some reshoots. Spoiler TV took some from-the-edge-of-the-set picures.

Jimmy Palmiotti, writer of the "Jonah Hex" comic told the Philadelphia Daily News: "I know for a fact that the shoots on 'Hex' are additional story being added . . . not reshoots. This is a great sign because the studio saw the rough cut and loved it, so much so they pushed up the date and decided to put more money into the film. Palmiotti talked indepth regarding his involvement in the film with jonahhexmovie.com and Cowboys & Indians

Actor Michael Papajohn reported that the wrap party was held Feb 6th 2010

In late March Film Music Reporter... reported that Marco Beltrami had taken over scoring duties, replacing John Powell, who had been working on the score with the heavy metal band Mastodon. Brent Hinds, the guitarist and singer from the band, mentioned in mid-April that Beltrami wanted a more restrained, subtle approach than the music recorded for Hex in L.A. last fall, and so the band had been fitting in work on new material around their tour.

Many fans and commentators had hoped the film would be showcased at WonderCon (April 2–4) with perhaps a trailer, as it seemed like a prime opportunity to commence promoting the film in adance of the June release, but there was no sign of it. Then in mid April the website nymag.com reported comments from an unnamed studio spokesman who insisted that a trailer would finally make its debut in front of New Line's A Nightmare on Elm Street, which opens April 30, and that the movie would open as scheduled on June 18. And director Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!) texted Vulture to say, "Trailer and film are looking great!". Collider.com reported that the trailer would debut on the SyFy channel the night of April 29th, and then be available online later that night or sometime soon after. They also predicted that a new poster would debut around the same time.

Some lucky folks were invited to a test screening on Sunday, April 25 in Los Angeles at the The Bridge: Cinema de Lux. Early tweets from those in attendance weren't enthusiastic, with a typical comment being "meh its ok but needs work". Then the longer reviews started appearing, with generally negative comments. For a sample check out aintitcool.com, but careful, there be spoilers!!

A trailer for the trailer screened on SyFy which caused some excitment. Soon after the final poster was released, and then the trailer itself appeared online:

Come May and the films marketing team hit top gear, with folk like Dwayne "the canoe guy" given the go-ahead to post articles about the set visits, two TV spots, individual character posters (see below), and several updates to the offical website, including a song called Born to Kill which I assume is by Mastodon. Then a second trailer:

Some media were reporting that Warner Bros. had decreed there would be no advance screenings, but Twitter was full of annoncements regarding advance screenings the week before the realse in the US, so I think they were referring to free screenings for press/media reviewers.

The film made the cover of a few magazines in the last few weeks before the premiere:

There waere also lots of "exclusive" clips online

The last few days before release saw a number of clips and interviews appear on the web.

Come the 17 of June and the film recieved had it's premiere at ArcLight Cinema in Hollywood. Some of the cast and crew were on hand to smile for the cameras, with Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, and Jimmy Hayward chatting with folk. It was nice to see Tony DeZuniga got an invite as well: It was a great experience, Tony told Inquirer.net. My wife Tina and I really enjoyed it. The people were cheering inside the movie house and I was surprised that they put my name in the credits. My name was very visible. People will not miss it – it was separate from everybody else’s, except for the names of the writers. Warner Bros. Pictures did an interview with me as side comments about the character and the movie for the DVD release. This was an experience of a lifetime.

While the stars enjoyed the night out, folks were tweeting and reviews were appearing from public preview screenings around the States which told a tale of woe. Comments such as Why Did They Make This Movie?... If you like your Western films to have lots of ridiculous action, bad dialog, cool weapons, rock music and poor acting, then Jonah Hex is for you... Jonah Hex is to film what the chicken nugget is to cuisine... at least it is short... too slight to be memorably terrible. Metacritic's survey of reviews sees Hex scoring 33 out of a possible 100. Most reviewers agree that the film is a confused mess, but credit the cast with doing their best with limited material. A small minority of reviewers appreciate the film as a blast of the cinema du bonkers, with critic Armond White arguing True art is watching hot-chick Megan Fox (as Lilah the hooker) fearlessly staring at the most grotesque side of Jonah’s face as if coming to grips with her own exploitation. Beautiful and brilliant.

In the end the audience seemed to vote with their wallets, prefering Toy Story 3, and leaving Jonah Hex to bomb at the Box Office, taking in only $5.1 million from 2,825 locations in its first weekend. The film was taken up as an excuse for various troubled production = bad moview and what the studios need to learn stories.

Come the next weekend and things weren't any better, with ticket sales down 70%, and a total domestic box office of $9,171,083, against and estimated production budget of $47,000,000.

Jonah Hex - Research for reporters

Dwayne "the canoe guy" at Matching Dragoons has put together a Quick Guide come Cheatsheet about Jonah Hex for the press regarding the character and the film. I think it's a useful summary of some important facts so I got his permission to post it here:

• Jonah Hex was created by John Albano & Tony DeZuniga in 1972.
• John Albano wrote ten (10) stories with Jonah Hex in them.
• David Michilene wrote three (3) Jonah Hex stories.
• Arnold Drake wrote one (1) Jonah Hex story.
• Jos Landsdale wrote thirteen (13) Jonah Hex stories.
• Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti have written fifty (50) stories with Jonah Hex.
• Michael Fleisher wrote one hundred and twenty five (125) Jonah Hex stories.
• Of the 202 books with Jonah Hex as the star Michael Fleisher wrote 62% of them.
• Michael Fleisher created Quentin Turnbull.
• Michael Fleisher created the history of Jonah Hex's scar.
• Zombies appeared in only five (5) issues (or 2%) of Jonah Hex (Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo)
• Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) only plays a part in eighteen (18) issues (or 9%) with Jonah Hex (HEX)
• Zombies are not "iconic" in the history of Jonah Hex.
• Zombies never appeared in the futuristic version of Jonah Hex.
• Jimmy Hayward (the director) has said that there are NO ZOMBIES IN THIS MOVIE!

Brolin on the role

From MTV.com

MTV: You're talking about "Jonah Hex"?

Brolin: I love it.

MTV: What's intriguing about that project?

Brolin: The absurdity of it. It almost allows you to create a new genre. I love going back into the spaghetti-Western idea and completely turning it around.

MTV: When are you going to decide whether you'll do it?

Brolin: Soon. In the last couple months, I've been going back and forth about it. I went back to my gut: "Is it a sellout? What is it I like about this movie?" When I first read it, I thought, "Oh my God, it's awful!" And then I had a moment a week later, and I thought, "Why is it awful?" Maybe the thing to do is to do the most awful movie I can find.

MTV: What's so awful about it?

Brolin: It's so tongue-in-cheek. It's so ridiculous. But once I started putting people in my mind and saying, "What if I put [John] Malkovich in this role? Then what does this movie become? Now let's put this producer and director on it and think about how it plays out." Then it becomes fun. Now I love that movie. If you have a great filmmaker come in, then suddenly, these gags and characters become interesting.

MTV: Are the filmmakers behind "Crank" still directing it?

Brolin: I don't know. It's all up in the air.

Michael Fassbender talks about his role

I kind of developed this character and really pushed it - I'll see how far I pushed it. I was John Malkovich's right hand man – I had this idea about the character, he's kind of psychotic, he gets his kicks in perverted ways. I didn't want to make it very obvious or like something you've seen before. But then I went into wardrobe and Michael Wilkinson, who I worked with before on 300 for costumes, had this three piece suit pulled out for me which was kind of green and I'm playing an Irishmen, and I said "look man, you've got to take the green down. I'm Irish! I can't go back to Ireland, they'll kill me." So, it was this faded down green-piece suit and I picked up this boiler hat and I put it on and I thought, this is just like Clockwork Orange. I thought I'm going to go along that vain and do Clockwork Orange meets Frank Gorshin, 1970's Riddler with a Carrey accent. Then the guys at prosthetics created this kind of tattoo thing that started at my face and went all the way down my torso and arms (see picture below). It's like the people around you that are doing these things, do the work for you. It began a really fun sort of character.

More: Michael Fassbender Talks Jonah Hex

Video interview

Megan Fox on her role as Leila

I'm Jonah's love interest I guess you could call it but it's not very conventional. She's a prostitute that he's been coming and visiting for years. They sort of have a special relationship. He doesn't want to get too close to her or allow her too close because everyone he loves dies. She doesn't really understand that concept. So it's a push and pull sort of situation.

The kind of prostitution that existed back then is very different than the kind that exists now. That was a very common way for a woman to make a living and we didn't really show. If there had been more graphic scenes, I probably would have [researched prostitutes] but the only sex scene that is in there is between Jonah and Leila and they're lovers, so that wasn't really the same sort of situation.

It was only five days that I filmed and I've never been more exhausted filming something. I mean, I shot 108 days on Transformers and the five days I spent on this were by far a lot more difficult. It's just hard. I'm way out of my league. Everything is so far over my head. I'm just trying to stay alive.

More: Interview: Megan Fox on Jonah Hex - CanMag

John Malkovich on his role as Quentin Turnbull

From Empire Online

I love Josh Brolin - he's a friend of mine, and he said, 'Would you be interested?' And I like the guy, Jimmy Hayward, who's directing him, so I said, 'Sure.'...It was fun. It's based on an American comic book from the 70s. Might do OK! I play a plantation-owner called Quentin Turnbull, who holds Jonah Hex responsible for the death of his son in the Civil War – it's set right after the American Civil War. 1872, I think it's set in. It's Josh, Megan and Michael Fassbender, who's terrific.

Mastodon on their work for the Score

From pastemagazine.com

Mastodon received a phone call from an enthusiastic fan. It was director Jimmy Hayward, who said he'd been inspired by repeated listenings of Mastodon's 2008 epic, Blood Mountain, and that said inspiration had helped him finish up a little project he was toiling over-the script for Jonah Hex. The album weighed heavily on Hayward, Sanders said, and so he wanted Mastodon to weigh heavily on his movie. "As opposed to labels profiteering the situation, saying they'd give a band $500,000 to use some song, he called us out of the blue as a fan," Sanders recalled. "It was the most beautiful, authentic way to collaborate."

...The resulting music is about an hour long in total, all instrumental, including five full songs and many smaller musical themes adapted throughout. Upon finishing, it was then given to composer John Powell ( Shrek, The Bourne Identity), who will paste the music to the movie. Some of the material, Sanders said, will likely be adapted for the London Orchestra for particularly epic scenes. "We wrote variations on themes for each character, different variables for a bunch of riffs: aster, slower, heavier, lighter," Sanders said. "It's the Darth Vader approach."

Michael Shannon on his role as Doc Cross Williams

In a short interview at mtv.com he describes the role as a cameo...

I play a fellow named Doc Cross Williams, said Shannon. In the comic book, or graphic novel, he's kind of one of those old vaudevillian... He has a traveling show where he has cock fights and dog fights and strange creatures, and he's a snake-oil kind of guy.

He's got this tonic, this elixir that he sells that'll solve all your problems, he explained. And Jonah Hex comes to my little circus and he causes a ruckus.

Will anyone but me care about a Jonah Hex Film?

Not according to Cinemablend.com

If you read movie sites like this one regularly, you've no doubt seen a lot of stories about Jonah Hex. Of course no normal person has ever heard of Jonah Hex and so you have to wonder what the obsession is with reporting it. Here's the answer: It's based on a comic book. Comic books are read by nerds. Movie sites are run by nerds. Unfortunately most movie site readers aren't nerds so we should probably all cool it with this one until something more interesting than the casting of C-list actor Thomas Jane happens with it. Sadly that's not going to happen, since the people making it know that no one cares and are thus making tons of boring exclusives available to a wide variety of nerd-run blogs who then in turn, run them and scream to everyone about their exclusive... even though probably nobody cares. It's a vicious circle of back slapping and mutual promotion that will only end in tears.

How To Get Us Interested: Better casting for starters. Thomas Jane is not a star. He's the poor man's Aaron Eckhart. Oh Josh Brolin now has the role? He's great, but he's no Tom Cruise. Jonah Hex could use a real goddamn celebrity. Unless it gets one, expect this one to slip quietly onto the bottom shelf of your local video store, where it probably belongs.