CowboysAndAliens Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I really believe this is the best geek news we'll have all month. Not only is Robert Downey Jr. officially on board Cowboys & Aliens, The Hollywood Reporter announced that he's bringing Jon Favreau along for the ride. Considering the original screenplay was penned by Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, it's literally a dream team come true.

As if it wasn't touched by the movie gods enough, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, they-who-can-write-no-failures, are penning the script, and producer Damon Lindelof came aboard last fall. There's no way this can fail. Even if the movie was one big trick, and simply 2 hours of Robert Downey Jr. in a cowboy hat reading a phone book, it would succeed. We would just call it arthouse, and praise them all for subverting our expectations!

But there's no danger of arthouse here, Cowboys & Aliens really does promise to be pure fun with this team. The story takes place in 1880s Arizona, where a war is raging between settlers and Native Americans. Their war is interrupted by the arrival of a UFO, which promptly unleashes hell onto the plains of Silver City. The Native Americans and settlers must unite to fight a larger threat, and are led to battle by Zeke Jackson (Downey), a gunslinger and former member of the Union Army. You can read the entire graphic novel online, which should keep you satisfied until Cowboys & Aliens hits theaters in the summer of 2011.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Robert Downey Jr. is in talks to star in Cowboys and Aliens, DreamWorks' adaptation of Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley's graphic novel. (Read Matt's original story on it.)

Downey Jr. would play Zeke Jackson, a former Union Army gunslinger, who is engaged in a battle against the Apache. But the battle between settlers and Native Americans is interrupted when an alien spaceship crashes into the Silver City prairie. Turns out, they have their eye on conquering Earth, forcing the warring westerners to form an uneasy alliance.

The project has been in and out of development for years, but apparently the latest draft is catching some A-list interest. As it was written by Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, who were behind Iron Man and Children of Men, I am immediately expecting good things out of something that, if handled poorly, could be as bad as Wild Wild West. Good writers and a good actor like Downey Jr. could make this movie incredibly fun. This is how movies like the first Pirates of the Caribbean come about.

I have to say, between this and Downey Jr.'s rumored interest in a comic-based Sherlock Holmes, I wonder if he is going to plunge into Hugh Jackman levels of geekdom. They will have to start fighting each other to get to the best comic book scripts. And that should be a movie all its own.