Corona | Coming Attractions

It's a little bit of a leap from directing an animated, family friendly movie based on a well-known childrens book author to calling the shots for a six-gun shooting cowboy cursed with a face that even his mother couldn't love but that's just what Jimmy Hayward is going to be doing. After delivering Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who to 20th Century Fox last spring and watching it gross over $150 million dollars domestic at the box office, Hayward's next picture will be the live-action Jonah Hex film that's been stuck in development hell for years.

Based on the DC Comics character (which was later given a harder supernatural edge when he was ported over to the company's more mature Vertigo imprint line 15 years ago), Hex is one of those tough as nails drifters cut from the same kind of sun-dried leather as a Clint Eastwood character. What little we know of Hex was that he was a Confederate soldier during the Civil War and had the right side of his face scarred after being tortured by Indians. In the years afterward Hex drifts across the American southwest, going from town to town, finding himself drawn into dangerous dealings, occult circumstances and sometimes outright supernatural horror.

While Hayward's a done deal the same can't be said for the man who might play Hex, Oscar-nominated Josh Brolin of No Country For Old Men and more recently W. Brolin's name has been swirling around the project ever since word broke that one-time Punisher leading man Thomas Jane was gunning for the role when the project was to be directed by the Crank duo of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor before they departed under creative disagreement circumstances. Warner Bros. plans on keeping Neveldine and Taylor's screenplay which, according to The Hollywood Reporter, uses the supernatural western setting although Hayward may do some fine tuning on it.