MASTODON Confirms 'Jonah Hex' Involvement

Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON have confirmed that they are working with composer John Powell and director Jimmy Hayward on the score to "Jonah Hex", the comic-book Western/horror film starring Josh Brolin in the lead role, with support from John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon. The movie is based on the DC comic series about a horribly scarred antihero who is "a rough-and-tumble gunslinger and part-time bounty hunter whose adventures always ended in blood."

MASTODON guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds makes a cameo appearance in the film, which is being directed by former Pixar animator Jimmy Hayward for a June 18, 2010 release.

In a May 2009 interview with Billboard.com, MASTODON drummer Brann Dailor revealed that a film adaptation of the band's latest album, "Crack the Skye", is well within the realm of possibility — albeit not in production yet.

Dailor told Billboard.com that the quartet sat down with a film director, whom he declined to name, and "wrote out a screenplay that reads from song to song. We didn't storyboard it, but we wrote a screenplay." Three different directors, he added, have expressed interest in taking on the project.

"That'd be killer if it actually happens," Dailor said. "That's something that's cool about making concept records, that opportunity for more to be done, artistically. If you just had an album with a bunch of songs that didn't have anything to do with each other and there was no common thread, that aspect of the art wouldn't be there. But with ('Crack the Skye'),we have that possibility."

"Crack the Skye"'s seven songs, produced by Brendan O'Brien, weave together a conceptual story involving a quadriplegic, astral travel, Stephen Hawking's theories on wormholes and the philosophies of Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin. "I think it's definitely the closest we've come to a fully cohesive story from start to finish," Dailor said.