“Because even though, up until recently, the western has been viewed as box office poison by Hollywood, the alien invasion movie has been seen as a very lucrative international genre.

“The alien side of it is what really made it possible,” the director claims.

Oddly enough, it was the outer space aspect that revived interest. And our stories somehow become bigger and more timeless when set in the mythic West.” Trouble is, back when Cowboys & Aliens originally was green lighted for production - that is, before Rango, True Grit, and the video game Red Dead Redemption recently launched what Favreau hopes is a western revival - the genre was viewed as, if not dead, then pretty dang dormant. “I think most directors, deep down, have the desire to make a western,” Favreau says. Indeed, Favreau believes that even with the help of Hollywood heavy hitters Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, who serve as producers on Cowboys & Aliens, he still would have had a hard time getting his latest project off the ground if Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, Adam Beach, and other notables in his cast weren’t sharing screen time with . well, aliens. But he notes, “We were sorely disappointed when we found out that, at the time, there was no market - especially in foreign territories, in international sales - for a western.” “I’ve always been a fan of westerns,” Favreau insists, pointing out that after he scored a surprise success as costar, screenwriter, and coproducer of Swingers, his 1996 breakout indie comedy, he and collaborator Vince Vaughn cowrote a dead-serious Wild West drama called The Marshal of Revelation. No matter what you might have thought when you first heard the title Cowboys & Aliens, no matter what you may have dreaded when you started considering the outlandish possibilities of a sci-fi western mash-up, director Jon Favreau ( Iron Man) wants to set you straight: He’s playing for keeps while aiming to please with “a very traditional western” that just happens to include some extraterrestrials. Despite the extraterrestrials, if director Jon Favreau has his way, this may be the next classic western.

Good the movie cowboys and aliens