Josh Brolin, who plays Bruce Bangley, an ex-Marine in the upcoming post-apocalyptic film The Dog Stars, nearly walked away from the Ridley Scott directorial.
Scott’s unconventional filmmaking approach involved shooting scenes with multiple cameras from different angles, which was something the actor had to make peace with. Speaking to Empire, Brolin admitted that despite being initially terrified, “It became one of the more creative, satisfying projects that I’ve ever been involved with.”
“Ridley was talking a lot of stories and not really rehearsing. And it bugged me out and I got really scared,” said Brolin, describing his first day on set.
The discomfort became so intense that the Running Man actor called his agent after the day wrapped and said he wanted to leave.
“Luckily, my agent is a close friend,” Brolin recalled. “He said, ‘Rest for a day.’”
Still unconvinced, Brolin responded: “No, man, I know what the f**k you’re doing. It’s not one of those day-things.’ And I was right.”
But the situation turned around when Scott invited Brolin to watch footage from a scene he had just shot with Jacob Elordi. Scott showed him the complete sequence and asked him whether it was “Okay?” Getting a glimpse of the results helped Brolin understand the Gladiator director’s vision and the logic behind his unconventional filmmaking.
“It took about a day or two for me to really embrace that and then I got super into it, because it was stratospherically creative and stratospherically dangerous,” he said. “It was like, ‘This is what I’ve been asking for,’ but now I’m getting it, I’m fighting it, because there’s zero comfort in it.”
The Dog Stars is not the first collaboration between Brolin and Scott. The pair previously worked together on 2007’s American Gangster.
Set in a world devastated by a deadly flu pandemic, the plot follows Hig, a civilian pilot and Bangley, a former Marine, navigating life after civilization collapses.
The movie adapts Peter Heller‘s bestselling 2012 novel of the same title.
Alongside Brolin and Elordi, the cast includes Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Guy Pearce and Benedict Wong. TThe screenplay was written by Mark L. Smith.
The film is produced by Scott Free Productions and distributed by 20th Century Studios. It arrives in U.S. theaters on August 28.