The next big sci-fi action-western flick is headed for a showdown with the writers associated with it’s development getting ready for a gunfight over the lucrative credit. From Iron Man director Jon Favreau, Cowboys & Aliens stars Daniel Craig who replaced Robert Downey Jr. due to scheduling, with screen legend Harrison Ford and Tron:Legacy babe Olivia Wilde, Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard are amongst the producers.
The film has some big set pieces from the wild west town to the yet unseen aliens and their ship, the budget has been kept under wraps but with the talent involved it’s likely that a $100 million dollars-plus is just a ball park figure.
The story is from a 2006 graphic novel written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley, with art work by Luciano Lima. However Scott Rosenberg, the head of Platinum Studios which controls the largest independent collection of comic books, was shopping the idea around when the story was still in it’s infancy.
It turns out that in 1997, he went into the William Morris Agency with a selection of posters from unpublished comic books for potential ideas and the one that came to their attention was the cover of the cowboy on horseback looking over his shoulder at a gigantic spaceship.
Since that time, eight writers and writing teams have worked on the Cowboys & Aliens script with the rights shifting between the studios, DreamWorks developed the film with Universal over the last decade and Paramount has secured global distribution rights to the flick.
T
he writers of the current script include Ron Howard with Star Trek scribes Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. The studios recently submitted paperwork to the Writers Guild that list only these writers based on the comic book created by Scott Rosenberg.
This is the where the stumbling block lies, as even though it’s common for scripts to go through many writers, the comics were published nine years after the first Cowboys screenplay was written. It’s those contributions by the unnamed writers who are not being included with only the A-list scribes standing to benefit if the studio’s version is endorsed by the WGA.
The dispute unless resolved is likely headed for arbitration, though these are the challenges of assigning credits on studio franchises that spend years in development.
Via: THR
Synopsis
It’s 1873 and in Arizona Territory, a stranger named Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution, with no memory of his past except a mysterious shackle that encircles his wrist. Absolution however doesn’t welcome strangers, and is ruled by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). But when the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, this challenges everything the residents have ever known. Now, the stranger they’ve rejected could be their only hope for salvation. As the gunslinger slowly remembers who he is, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance and with the help of the elusive traveler Ella (Olivia Wilde), he pulls together the town and the Apache warriors to unite against the common enemy, and prepare for an epic showdown.
Production wrapped September 30 2010, with a scheduled release set for July 29, 2011.
Update: Trailer
No comments yet.