Whether or not it was advice anyone chose to live their life by, no matter how hard any DC Comics adaptation flopped at the box office, somebody somewhere could always keep their spirits up by thinking to themselves, “Well, at least it wasn’t as big of a bomb as Jonah Hex.”
That remained true for well over a decade until this very year, when both Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash came along to engage in a summertime battle over which one would go down in the history books as the bigger money-losing disaster to ever emerge from the comic book company, with the Scarlet Speedster ultimately emerging as the clear victor.
For a long time it seemed as if Jonah Hex could never be toppled, seeing as the supernatural Western that conspired to waste a ridiculously stacked cast that numbered Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Michael Shannon, Will Arnett, Lance Reddick, and Michael Fassbender opened to just $5.4 million domestically and ended its theatrical run having recouped less than a quarter of its $47 million budget.
There’s also the fact it’s just awful, taking a well-deserved critical pasting and somehow managing to overstay its welcome despite running for a measly 81 minutes including credits. It had massive potential to be a cult favorite, though, something streaming subscribers will no doubt find themselves lamenting after FlixPatrol shared the shocking revelation that the irredeemable atrocity has somehow ended up as one of the Top 10 most-watched movies among Prime Video users in the United States.