Led by James Gunn and Peter Safran, DC Studios was tasked with rebuilding viewers belief after virtually a decade of mismanagement and rushed course corrections had undermined the DC model. The primary check of the brand new technique got here with 2025’s Superman, which turned the most important superhero launch of the yr, charmed followers and critics alike, and launched a lived-in universe that included different heroes, together with Superman’s (David Corenswet) cousin Supergirl (Milly Alcock). Nevertheless, Supergirl’s solo film was disastrous, ending its theatrical run with $125.9 million worldwide and inflicting an estimated $200 million loss for the studio. Supergirl now sits among the many largest DC theatrical bombs at Warner Bros., an inventory that features a supernatural Western nonetheless remembered as one of many studio’s worst manufacturing disasters.
Jonah Hex arrived in theaters on June 18, 2010, adapting the DC Comics gunslinger for a big-budget Warner Bros. manufacturing. Josh Brolin starred as Jonah Hex, a disfigured bounty hunter monitoring his outdated commanding officer, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), throughout the postwar West, with Lilah Black (Megan Fox) as his love curiosity and Burke (Michael Fassbender) serving as Turnbull’s chief enforcer. Lieutenant Grass (Will Arnett) and Doc Cross Williams (Michael Shannon) rounded out the principal solid, alongside Wes Bentley, Aidan Quinn, and Lance Reddick in supporting roles. Many of those names went on to grow to be massive for comedian guide lovers as soon as they managed to discover a mission the place they might show their expertise. Brolin went on to play Thanos within the Avengers movies and Cable in Deadpool 2. Fassbender turned Magneto throughout 4 X-Males movies and earned an Oscar nomination for 12 Years a Slave. Shannon returned to a DC blockbuster three years later as Normal Zod in Man of Metal earlier than incomes a second Oscar nomination for Nocturnal Animals. Talking on awards, Malkovich already carried two Oscar nominations, for Locations within the Coronary heart and Within the Line of Fireplace, earlier than he ever signed on to play Turnbull. None of that expertise translated into ticket gross sales. Jonah Hex opened to $5.4 million and completed its run with $11 million.
Why Did Jonah Hex Bomb on the Field Workplace?
The chaos behind Jonah Hex started with the funds. Warner Bros. and Legendary initially budgeted the movie at $80 million, then minimize that determine to $40 million earlier than manufacturing started, with out decreasing the scope of a script that included a serious set piece on a ship and a full-blown Civil Battle battle. The minimize didn’t serve the studio nicely, as a result of reshoots later added roughly $25 million again to the funds, with the ultimate numbers believed to be near the total $80 million. Brolin has since mentioned the mismatch between scale and comedian books was the true drawback, arguing the character would have labored higher as a lean, low-budget Western within the vein of Excessive Plains Drifter than as a special-effects-driven studio tentpole. Because it was, the manufacturing crew was all the time combating the constraints of the funds and the script’s ambition, which helps clarify the lackluster film that hit theaters.
Jonah Hex additionally suffered from years of behind-the-scenes drama. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the writing and directing group behind Crank, have been connected to write down and direct Jonah Hex as an R-rated Western earlier than Warner Bros. eliminated them from the director’s chair in November 2008 over artistic variations. The studio saved their script however changed them with Jimmy Hayward, an animator whose solely prior directing credit score was the household movie Horton Hears a Who!. Warner Bros. additionally shifted the score goal to PG-13. That’s why the completed movie often cuts away from violence in bizarre methods, an impact of the PG-13 mandate colliding with materials written for a tougher score.
Filming of Jonah Hex started in Louisiana in April 2009 underneath Hayward. Warner Bros. was sad sufficient along with his minimize, in order that they introduced in Francis Lawrence to direct a separate spherical of reshoots. Brolin later mentioned the crew reworked 66 pages of script in twelve days, working at a quick tempo simply to get all the things on movie. The reshoots added the movie’s superweapon plot, further scenes explaining Hex’s capacity to talk with the lifeless, and new materials involving President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn), whereas trimming Michael Shannon and Will Arnett’s roles right down to a handful of seconds every. Footage from Hayward’s authentic minimize, together with a dream-sequence struggle between Hex and Turnbull, remained within the launch alongside the newly shot materials, making the film seem like a visual patchwork.
Advance phrase about Jonah Hex‘s troubled manufacturing had circulated for months earlier than its launch, with many DC followers giving up on the movie earlier than its launch. But, Warner Bros. nonetheless determined to launch the film as counter-programming in opposition to Pixar’s Toy Story 3. The technique wasn’t so daring, as Warner Bros. had projected solely a $10 million opening, and it’s possible they only needed to make use of Toy Story 3 to partially justify the failure. Even then, audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the movie a C+ following its opening weekend, which implies a widespread rejection from individuals who watched Jonah Hex in theaters. Sure, the solid was phenomenal, however the back-and-forth of adjustments and artistic interference killed Jonah Hex lengthy earlier than its launch week.
Jonah Hex is presently obtainable to stream on HBO Max.