John Malkovich will be strapping on some six-shooters to take on Josh Brolin in Warner Brothers upcoming adaptation of the DC Comics anti-hero Jonah Hex.
Brolin is set to play the roving, Old West gunslinger Jonah Hex. Variety describes Malkovich’s role thusly- “Malkovich will play Turnbull, a wealthy Southern plantation owner whose son is killed by Union soldiers during the Civil War. He blames Hex, a former confederate soldier-turned-hardened bounty hunter and gunslinger.”
Jonah Hex is a Civil War veteran who fought on the side of the Confederacy. Moving westward, Hex soon became one of the most notorious guns-for-hire in the lawless territories.
The movie is set to begin production in April.
It’s nice to see that comics outside of the usual superhero genre are making it to the big screen. Sure, there have been others non-spandex and superpowers books that have reached the big screen- Men In Black, A History Of Violence, American Splendor, Ghost World, Road To Perdition. While I think that the comics medium has made great strides in getting the public to realize that there is an incredible diversity of genres covered in comic books, I still think there are some negative connotations of the medium out there that could stand to be eradicated.
Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who) is directing the script by Crank scribes Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.
