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Orci & Kurtzman: Cowboys and Aliens won't be Wild Wild West
Writing partners Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek) told SCI FI Wire that their upcoming Cowboys and Aliens movie will mash up sci-fi and the Old West in a way that hasn't been done before.
"We're in the middle of writing that with [Lost executive producer] Damon Lindelof," Kurtzman said in an exclusive interview last week. "We're hoping to deliver that soon, but it's feeling really good, and it's really exciting because it's just fun to write a genre [mashup]."
Added Orci: "Audiences are so savvy now that you almost—I think these are the kinds of things that we look for, is things that you can't imagine well together."
Cowboys and Aliens is based on the Platinum Comics graphic novel written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley. Set in the mid-1800s in Arizona, it deals with the invasion by an extraterrestrial species with plans to enslave humanity, but cowboys and native Apache have other plans. Orci and Kurtzman are acting as producers and writers on the project for DreamWorks; Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg are also producing.
Following is an edited version of our interview with Orci and Kurtzman about Cowboys and Aliens. The movie is slated for a 2010 release.
Well, this seems like such a natural idea that it's surprising it hasn't been done yet.
Kurtzman: It's deceptively tricky, though. ... That's what they said about Transformers [which Orci and Kurtzman also wrote], and it was in development for almost 20 years. It's just one of those weird things where you have to find the right story, and hopefully we have.
Orci: And the right tone.
Kurtzman: Tone is the whole ballgame, yeah.
Talk about tone. How do you marry these two disparate genres like that?
Orci: By trying to be really true to both. It's odd. You want it to feel like a real western that then gets interrupted realistically by this phenomenon, as opposed to a cartoon.
Kurtzman: Yeah, ... It's not the Wild Wild West tone. You know? It's much more of a straightforward kind of serious movie that is all of a sudden interrupted with the arrival of aliens.
In a way that feels organic to the milieu you've created?
Orci: Yeah, because that's the tricky part, you know? ... Some of the words that we'd all use in everyday language to describe an alien invasion simply don't exist in 1880. And so you have to make sure that you are somehow putting yourself in their mindset, thinking about "How would you even talk about what you're looking at here?" ...
Will it be relatively true to the comics, or are you just taking the premise and creating your own thing?
Orci: Like Transformers, you have to come up with what is the live-action translation of a good concept.
I don't think it's a particularly well-known graphic novel
Kurtzman: No, it's just, it was just kind of like, what are some of these ideas? And we ended up [fabricating] a new story.
By x8pcg5 at 9:21 AM ON 03/30/09
wait, what????
original? how are they acting surprised to the idea of scifi meets wild west?
are they just basically ignoring all of firefly?
By Giavs at 9:42 AM ON 03/30/09
This is a prefect example of writers NOT READING the works of other writers. Not keeping current of THIER industry. The pompus arrogance of their superior ego and self proclaimed talent! Firefly/Serenity hello! dumb asses!
By Giavs at 9:45 AM ON 03/30/09
No...wait! Wait! I forgot the classic of them all...The Adventures of Brico Country Jr.!
By Kyle Nin at 10:02 AM ON 03/30/09
"Brisco County Jr." had time travelers, not aliens.
And "Firefly" didn't take place in the mid-1800's. Plus, there were no aliens on that series.
By Giavs at 10:11 AM ON 03/30/09
Correct...but I'm addressing the mxing of westerns and scifi...it NOT as unique as these two claim it to be....THAT's my point....
By jackjward at 10:30 AM ON 03/30/09
Firefly (As much as I love it) is Science Fiction with Western subtext. They are talking about marrying Westerns with the Science Fiction genre.
That's closer to Steampunk than Firefly.
It's more like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Without the aliens).
I'm currently writing a Western Audio drama with similar themes.. although its Fantasy instead of Science Fiction.
The balance is the hardest. You can't just have a regular Western and then hit people with Sci-Fi.. unless they know its coming (as in the title).
My show "Prairie Fire" will be out this year. I'll be interested in seeing how "Cowboys and Aliens" operates next!
By theodoris at 2:33 PM ON 03/30/09
Well i hope ifor them t`s going to work but i have my doubts.
It`s sound a lot like Firefly to me and the main reason it didn`t work was because most sci fi fan hate western.
And most western fan hate sci fi.
So if they are trying to get those 2 groups together again like they tried with Firefly, it`s just not going to work.
By jackjward at 8:34 PM ON 03/30/09
I'd love to see the stats on those.
I'm a Sci Fi fan and a western fan. In fact everyone I know who's a sci-fi fan is a western fan.
Where do you get those stats?
By Son of a Maui Portagee at 6:54 PM ON 03/31/09
I believe the earliest filmed Western SF was Gene Autry's 1935 serial, THE PHANTOM EMPIRE. I have a hazy recollection that NBC tried to remake it into a semi-regular tv series in the 1980s.
The earliest literature that I recall was A. A. Norton's Native American meets space/space aliens tomes from around the 1960s, I believe.
The earliest filmed story about space aliens meeting the west would be Irwin Allen's VISITORS FROM BEYOND THE STARS episode of his TIME TUNNEL tv series.
By rtavi at 5:00 PM ON 04/01/09
Read Harold Waldrop's Night of the Cooters (dedicated to Slim Pickens) in which westerners meet H. G, Wells Martians with far different results than in Victorian England.
Norton"'s Hosteen Storm stories were set in the future not the old west. Yiu might like Old
West Cthulhu since Lovecrafts Elder Gods are actually Aliens.
By linzi at 9:14 PM ON 04/01/09
Or try the graphic novel Territory 51 which came out 3 or 4 years before CBA and was a much better take on the concept.
By Son of a Maui Portagee at 5:18 AM ON 04/04/09
rtavi,
I was thinking of the "facts" of history uncovered by her agents in Norton's THE TIME TRADERS series of novels.
By swittersx at 12:43 PM ON 05/12/09
There's usually always a genesis project that inspires these things. They just never have the industry momentum to go anywhere, which this current project seemed to be one of, but it has hung on and looks to be heading toward production. About 20 years ago a "Cowboys & Aliens" script went out all over town. But it was basically "The Hidden" set in the 1870's. Then came a really poorly produced straight to video movie with the same name done about 10 years ago. Really hilarious campy stuff (I seem to recall some alien sex gal in leather with a whip...). I don't think you can even find it on IMDB. The comic book this current edition is based on, is far from A-list material. In fact I think it was created to help sell the idea of the movie to begin with. Hopefully the script has nothing to do with the comic other than the broad premise.
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swittersx:
There's usually always a genesis project that inspires these things. They just never have the industry momentum to ...More »