The Thicket Director Explains How Metallica's James Hetfield Joined the Cast

The Metallica singer finally takes on a spooky western.

By Russ Burlingame

Metallica's James Hetfield stars in Tubi's new Western The Thicket, and yes -- director Elliott Lester sang "Enter Sandman" at him during production. As much of a surprise as it might be, though, that isn't how they attracted him to the role. Apparently, the negotiations were easy enough -- Hetfield loved the idea of appearing in a Western -- but coming up with the idea was basically a little bit of divine intervention. In The Thicket,  a bounty hunter and a band of unlikely heroes pursue a brutal killer, only to find themselves trapped in "The Thicket." 

And that frigid no-man's-land sprang, at least in part, from a dream by Lester. From there, they had to call in some favors to get Hetfield on the line.

"I had a dream, I woke up, and I called Peter Dinklage. I said, 'I've had a dream and we have to make this happen,'" Lester explained. "He said, 'What's your dream?' and I said, 'We must have James Hetfield in this movie.' He said, 'I love that idea,' I said, 'Well, how are we going to find him?' So I tried to get ahold of him through management, I couldn't get hold of him, but we knew somebody who'd made this movie called Anvil, it's a documentary about heavy metal bands, and we ended up getting hold of James within a week, and we did the Zoom call with James Hetfield. It was phenomenal, he was like, 'You know, I've always wanted to do a dark western.' And I was like, oh wow. You can hear it in his voice; that voice is unmistakable. And then yeah, he signed on, he came in, and he was really wonderful to direct actually. He gave himself to the role, to the film."

Hetfield, the lead singer and co-founder of Metallica, has a distinctive voice -- one that Lester tries to emulate in our interview (seen at the top of the page).

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Per the movie's official synopsis, in The Thicket, "when fierce bounty hunter Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage) is recruited by a desperate man to track down a ruthless killer known only as Cutthroat Bill (Juliette Lewis), he rallies a band of unlikely heroes including a grave-digging ex-slave and a street-smart woman-for-hire. Together they embark on a perilous quest to track down Cutthroat Bill that leads them into the deadly no-man's-land known as...The Thicket."

The Thicket will land in theaters on September 6th before traveling to Tubi for streaming.

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