Josh Brolin says James Cameron was ‘angry’ he turned down ‘Avatar’ role

Josh Brolin thinks he made James Cameron mad by rejecting a part the director offered him — and he has speculated why.

The No Country for Old Men star recently reflected on turning down a part in an Avatar sequel that the Titanic filmmaker wanted him to play.

“I heard he was angry,” Brolin said in a new interview for In Depth With Graham Bensinger. “I understand it, because when you have something in your mind and you have a status and a power… you’re used to people feeling really grateful that you are offering it to them.”

But Brolin acknowledged that he didn’t actually know Cameron’s mindset after he declined working with him. “I don’t know if that’s the case with him because I don’t know him well enough,” the actor said. “But it was based on the [project]. It wasn’t based on him.”

In the past Brolin has said he had no problem addressing the antagonism he faced after passing on the sci-fi saga. “James Cameron’s f—ing calling me this name and that name,” he said in a 2017 interview with Esquire. “Whatever. If James Cameron came to me and said, ‘Hey, man, why’d you say that?’ I’d go, ‘Because it happened.'”

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Brolin also noted in his In Depth interview that when he did eventually get swept up in a sprawling sci-fi series, it was a complete accident. “I wasn’t trying to get Dune,” he said. “I went in to pitch a different idea. And then I ended up — [producer] Mary Parent looked at me and was like, ‘What about Josh for Dune?'”

The actor immediately accepted the offer because he’d had a positive experience working with Dune director Denis Villeneuve on Sicario in 2015. “I didn’t even need to read that, because it’s Denis, and I love Denis,” he said. “So I had a relationship with Denis, and it was like, ‘I don’t care what the role is, I’ll do anything with you.'”

The actor also reflected on a failed Hunchback of Notre Dame production that never saw the light of day. “I remember Johnny Depp was going to be the poet, and I’d met with Tim Burton in Cannes and was on Johnny’s boat talking with Tim, and he was really into it,” Brolin recalled, adding how surreal it was to speak with such a massive director and star about a film they could make with him. “I was just like, ‘What the f—?’ And we were all in, and then the studio had a problem. I even offered it to the Coens at one point.”

Listen to Brolin and Bensinger’s full conversation above.