Josh Brolins has been a regular on Hollywood gossip sites for years, but he didn’t know he’d be getting the opportunity to play a role in the sequel to the 2014 film The Revenant.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Brolin talked about the casting of his character Sean, as well as the movie’s biggest story lines in the coming weeks.
Brolin plays the lead role in The Blacklist, a film about a group of corrupt cops who are trying to protect an illegal gunrunning ring from the US government.
The movie’s first trailer, released in early December, showed Sean as a character that Brolin said was “really, really different from what you would expect.”
While the trailer featured plenty of CGI and a scene that was “not entirely in English, it was very much in the style of the original,” Brolin explained.
The trailer also included some familiar scenes from The Reunion, including a scene where Sean is playing poker with his family and his wife.
The trailer also featured a flashback that showed Sean (Brolin) and his family as they are at a restaurant, as they watch the news, and as he sees his daughter, he’s sitting in the car listening to the news.
“We’re in the same car.
It’s all happening in real time,” Brolins said.
“I had a little moment in the trailer when I see the news and I think, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening?
What’s happening?’
That’s one of the things I was really, really proud of.”
The Reunion trailer also showed a new sequence where Sean and his children, played by Taron Egerton and Josh Brolis, have to deal with their father’s drug use and mental illness.
“The first scene of the trailer was just sort of, what would Sean do in this situation?
And I was like, ‘Well, I think we have a choice of the best thing to do for him,'” Brolins recalled.
“So that was one of my favorite scenes.”
In the second scene, Sean and Brolin were forced to choose between protecting his children and saving the world.
“And Sean chose to save the world,” Brollis said.
But he also had to keep a watchful eye on Sean’s behavior, even when it comes to the gunrunning business.
“I think one of Sean’s problems is he has a very dark sense of humor,” Brohlis said of Sean.
“He kind of gets carried away.
He really does, and he’s got this dark sense that he has no control over anything, and so when he sees a situation where he has to choose his actions based on what he sees and what he thinks, he can’t take a second step.
And that’s what’s really important.”
Sean was originally meant to be played by Daniel Kaluuya, who had already been cast in the film, but Kaluuia passed away in early February.
In the months leading up to the trailer, Brolins was able to meet with Kaluuys widow, who told him she was proud of her husband’s performance in the first film.
“So, that was very, very sweet,” Broln said.
“It was great,” he added.
“And I really, truly felt like I was getting to see my character through his eyes.
It was a real blessing to get to know him.
And it was just so satisfying to be able to play my character.”
The BlackList trailer was released to rave reviews, which sparked a bidding war for the rights.
The film was picked up by Paramount Pictures in May for a release date of May 2, 2019.
Brolins is also currently filming a second movie in Los Angeles called The Man in the High Castle, which is slated to hit theaters in November 2019.