Downey and Favreau Cowboys and Aliens

If It Ain't Broke, Don't F**k It Up

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (13)

It’s something of a Robert Downey, Jr. day here at Pajiba (as you’ll likely notice in this afternoon’s posts). We begin with this news: Jon Favreau has apparently expressed interest in directing Cowboys and Aliens, a movie based on a graphic novel written by Thomas Dean Donnelly. Robert Downey, Jr. has been attached to the project since last summer, although development of the project has rattled around the gates of hell since 1997. Steve Oedekirk (Bruce Almighty, Ace Ventura) was attached at one point.

Fortunately, the project has bounced into the what’s hopefully the right hands. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are producing with Steven Spielberg, and Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are penning the script with Damon Lindeloff. That’s the same team tackling Star Trek 2, and hopefully Lindeloff can round out Orci and Kurtzman’s rough edges. They’re decent ideas men, but not the best of scriptwriters (Transformers, Mission Impossible III), but they’ve had JJ Abrams there to help hide the flaws (while Michael Bay exposed them in Transformers).

The premise is a little Wild Wild Westy: Set in the Old West, cowboys and Native Americans are fighting over land when aliens attack, forcing the two enemies to work together. A giant mechanical spider may or may not play into the denouement. Clearly, it’s a broad premise, and I haven’t read the graphic novel to know how well it worked. But, it does leave a lot of room for flexibility. And at this point in his career, Robert Downey, Jr. is savvy enough to avoid clear junkers.

All of which is to say: We’ll see.

Follow @pajiba

← The Killer Inside Me News | Three Musketeers in 3D →

Comments

Hah! That image did it. I'm in.

Posted by: , (TCFKAB) at September 2, 2009 11:03 AM

Giant mechanical spiders?

*sheds a single lonely tear and stares across landscape*

Posted by: ed newman at September 2, 2009 11:05 AM

Quick! Close the tag before all the words fall out!

Posted by: Rykker at September 2, 2009 11:05 AM

And now the autoitalics are on, for no good reason.

Posted by: , (TCFKAB) at September 2, 2009 11:05 AM

Were you being ironic in those last two paragraphs?

Posted by: Caspar at September 2, 2009 11:09 AM

"I'm sitting there, watching the movie, thinking, this is a piece of crap and then, this giant fucking spider appears."

Posted by: commanderfunky at September 2, 2009 11:13 AM

commanderfunky - one of the greatest bits of storytelling ever. Hi-fucking-larious.

Posted by: TK at September 2, 2009 11:47 AM

Sci-fi AND western shit?

That means it's something both of us would want to see. In the theater. Possibly not even matinee.

And now I want to go find the graphic novel and give it a whirl. Those things take about an hour or two to read, tops.

Posted by: Snuggiepants the Deathbringer at September 2, 2009 11:58 AM

So, y'all loved the sci-fi as western meme in Firefly (yes, yes, I know, outer space cowboys, futuristic, blah,blah, not the same thing) but are pre-bullshitting it here? Just sayin' when Firefly was described to me as a sci-fi western, I dismissed it out of hand, took a year to watch the DVD's I was gifted, then kicked myself hard in the ass.
I could have been lusting after Nathan Fillion for that entire year! All that wasted bunk time! Well, I guess bunk time is never wasted really,but still, it could have been better spent.

Posted by: Lindsey with an 'e' at September 2, 2009 1:21 PM

Ditto on the Sci-fi Western hate. I was pleasantly surprised by the cartoon "The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers" as a kid, but mostly this subgenre produces cheap and shitty excuses to try to tell a sci-fi story with dirt and old boards.

Al I knew about Whedon in 2002 was that he had been one of the people responsible for the atrocity that was Alien Resurrestion and the misfire that was Titan A.E., both of whose most redeeming features were scrappy cargo ship crews. Oh, and some shit about vampires and cheerleaders.

Therefore, when Firefly aired on Fox that fall, I was pretty sure it would suck. Other than the dorky looking spaceship, however, the first episode, which was not the first episode, looked pretty good. Not good enough to get me on board in the face of Fox's constant stupidity with handling the show, but good.

When the Serenity DVD was released, my miniscule interest in the whole saga led me to buy and watch the show and the film, and it was, all of it, very good. You can do the wild west in space without it sucking, and even with a low budget, they still created a world...or 2, and Whedon's scrappy cargo ship crew thing really was a good idea and finally found a focus.

The parallels between westerns and sci-fi are well documented, and it's possible to combine them to great effect. Also, graphic novels can be made into decent films. So what's the catch?

The two-headed shambling clusterfuck that is Robalex Kortzmin (ROKO) will shit all over this, and then everyone will tell me it was great.

Posted by: laredo at September 2, 2009 1:54 PM

Did no one watch the masterpiece High Plains Invaders on the SciFi/SyFy/STFU Channel this weekend? With James Marsters (aka Spike)?

Well I did.

I was like, "Wow, SciFi made their own shitty version of Wild Wild West. How lovely of them."

Posted by: MM at September 2, 2009 2:08 PM

Damn! That is the exact plot idea I was hoping that Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, and co. would use to follow up Hot Fuzz! DAMMIT!

Posted by: ChristianH at September 2, 2009 3:08 PM

For a while, I was all, 'Why the hell have you got a picture of RDJ and the guy who played his bodyguard up there?'
Then I realised that was Favreau. Well, if the director insists on a role, the bodyguard's not a bad one, all things considered.

Posted by: ScienceGeek at September 3, 2009 4:14 AM

Pajiba

Pajiba: Reviews, Commentary, Angst

If It Ain't Broke, Don't F**k It Up

Comments