With his latest role in The Dog Stars, Josh Brolin was ready to throw in the towel on the first day.
The Oscar nominee recently explained why director Ridley Scott “bugged me out” and nearly made him drop out of his role as ex-Marine Bangley in the post-apocalyptic drama, which premieres Aug. 28.
“Ridley was talking a lot of stories and not really rehearsing, and it bugged me out, and I got really scared,” he told Empire. “I went back, called my agent and said, ‘I want out. Something’s really wrong, and I’ve got to get the f*ck out of here.’”
Brolin added, “Luckily my agent is a close friend and he said, ‘Rest for a day.’ I was like, ‘No, man, I know what the f*ck you’re doing. It’s not one of those day-things.’ And I was right.”
Despite previously working with Scott on American Gangster (2007), Brolin was not accustomed to the director’s new high-energy, multi-camera style used on The Dog Stars. But after seeing the dailies, the actor began to understand Scott’s vision.
Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin in ‘The Dog Stars’ (2026) (Fabio Lovino/20th Century Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection)
“[Ridley] goes, ‘Come here,’ and he brought me into his trailer, and played the scene we had just finished,” recalled Brolin. “It was a really good, very dynamic scene between me and Jacob, and he goes, ‘Okay?’ I go, ‘Okay,’ and then I started to feed off that.”
Based on the novel by Peter Heller, Jacob Elordi stars in The Dog Stars as a grief-stricken pilot who’s accompanied by his loyal dog in navigating a post-pandemic American wilderness, clinging to survival and the faint hope of human connection after a mysterious radio transmission suggests they may not be alone.
Penned by Mark L. Smith, the veteran scribe behind Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant, the film also stars Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce and Benedict Wong.
Scott produced the picture alongside Scott Free president Michael Pruss, as well as Smith and Cliff Roberts.
