Josh Brolin wanted to quit Ridley Scott’s ‘The Dog Stars’ after one day: “I got really scared”
Josh Brolin has revealed he wanted to quit Ridley Scott‘s new movie The Dog Stars shortly after production began.
The upcoming post-apocalyptic film from the legendary English director is set for release in cinemas on August 28th, 2026. It also stars Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong, and Guy Pearce.
However, coming into production, Brolin was already off the back of a gruelling schedule that had seen him work on Weapons, Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man and The Running Man in quick succession, which made him question if he wanted to be on a film set again.
Brolin recalled to Empire about his initial rehearsals for The Dog Stars in Italy, “Ridley was talking a lot of stories and not really rehearsing, and it bugged me out, and I got really scared.”
He admitted, “I went back, called my agent and said, ‘I want out. Something’s really wrong, and I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.'”
Brolin then recalled the conversation he had with his agent, sharing,” Luckily my agent is a close friend and he said, ‘Rest for a day.’ I was like, ‘No, man, I know what the fuck you’re doing. It’s not one of those day-things.’ And I was right.”
Eventually, Brolin acclimatised to the methods that Scott uses and upon being invited into the director’s trailer to see one particular scene featuring him and Elordi, which he described as “a really good, very dynamic scene”, the actor began to “feed off” the unusual methods.
The star elaborated, “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.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Brolin is glad that he stayed with the movie, describing it as “one of the more creative, satisfying projects that I’ve ever been involved with”.
Per the film’s logline, it is a “riveting, epic thriller set in a world where survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice.”
The synopsis adds, “Scott tells the story of Hig, a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley, has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to venture into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exists.”
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