Brothers Director Max Barbakow Reveals Movies That Influenced Josh Brolin, Peter Dinklage Comedy

Josh Brolin (Avengers: Infinity War) and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) are teaming up for a new crime comedy, Brothers. The movie centers on two criminal twin brothers, one of whom is trying to reform, as they embark on a heist road trip. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and the two have to fix their relationship before they end up dead or in jail.

The story comes from Etan Cohen (Idiocracy), so it’s kind of ironic that when ComicBook’s Chris Killian asked filmmaker Max Barbakow about their influences, the first one that comes up is Raising Arizona, the breakout feature from Joel and Ethan Cohen. But it’s hardly the only thing he name-dropped, and if you’re wondering what the vibe of Brothers is…well, there were a handful of films he mentioned as a tonal match.

“Raising Arizona was a big one for us, just tonally and also with the vernacular, and the small time criminal mentality and the twisted heart at the core of it,” Barbakow told ComicBook. “Midnight Run — more of a buddy crime comedy, less of a heist film. Hot Rock, if you’ve seen that, the Peter Yates film, that is a great movie with Robert Redford. Everything just goes wrong continually, so they’re constantly improvising, and it kind of feels like a hangout movie or something like that. I’m a big Bottle Rocket fan. There’s a sweetness to that movie too, that we talked about. And I guess Bad Santa. That’s not in the heist canon, but a subversive, holiday, crime comedy. That was big for us as well.”

You can see the full interview above.

The obvious parallel, too, is to Twins, an ’80s comedy that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as twin brothers. Barbakow told ComicBook that he would love to cross his brothers over with Schwarzenegger and DeVito — but that he would be more keen to have the A-listers playing their characters from Junior, a movie in which Schwarzenegger becomes the first-ever biological male to become pregnant.

In addition to Brolin and Dinklage, Brothers stars Glenn Close (Guardians of the Galaxy), Brendan Fraser (The Whale), and Taylour Paige (Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F). The movie will be produced by Brolin, Dinklage, and Andrew Lazar.

The movie was produced under the auspices of MGM, and was acquired for distribution on Prime Video. Amazon, of course, is the parent company of both Prime Video and MGM.

Brothers is now streaming on Prime Video.