Downey Jr. and Favreau team again for Cowboys and Aliens

By Dave Campbell

It looks as if the chemistry of the Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau partnership isn’t limited to the Iron Man franchise. Today it is being reported in the trades that the pair will re-team immediately after Iron Man 2, for Cowboys and Aliens.

Creators Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley published the indie comic Cowboys & Aliens in 2006 with Platinum Studios. The story surrounds the wild west Arizona landscape in the mid-1800s. An extraterrestrial species crash lands with the intent of enslaving humans, but the Cowboys and native Apache who’ve previously been battling each other have other plans for the invading aliens.

Downey Jr. has been attached to the production since announcements of the project surfaced in the summer of 2008, but no director has been attached until the news broke that Favreau was in final negotiations to direct. Iron Man writing team Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus have been involved as one of the seven writing teams attached to the screenplay since Universal and Dreamworks gained the rights in 1997, before the comic was published.

The current draft is being penned by box office darlings Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who are the team responsible for the Star Trek (2009) and Transformers franchises. This is all being backed by a producer dream team of Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Alex Kurtzman, Richard Marincic, Roberto Orci, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Damon Lindelof, Ervin Rustemagic, and Steven Spielberg.

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Cowboys and Aliens script is done

By Fred Topel – SciFiWire.com

Screenwriting duo Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek) said they turned in their draft of Cowboys & Aliens on Aug. 5 and are now awaiting feedback on their screenplay adaptation of Fred Van Lente’s graphic novel.

“We literally handed it in yesterday,” Kurtzman said in a group interview on Aug. 6 in Pasadena, Calif., where the duo were promoting their Fox TV show Fringe. “So ask us Monday.”

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Damon Lindelof co-wrote the script with Orci and Kurtzman. Orci added that they’ve done the best they could, and now it is in producers’ and actors’ hands.

“We’ll find out, literally,” Orci said during the interview. “We’re waiting to hear from the principals. We try not to turn it in until we think it’s ready. Obviously, there are always things you can improve.”

The graphic novel deals with feuding frontier settlers and Native Americans in the Old West who team up to fight extraterrestrials. Orci and Kurtzman previously told SCI FI Wire that they put their own spin on the story. Now producers Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg, as well as potential star Robert Downey Jr., will get their say.

“We’re just literally waiting to hear if they hate it or what,” Orci said.

Cowboys & Aliens is tentatively slated for a 2011 release, with some sites reporting June 24 as the specific date.

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Bride of Frankenstein given new life

By Steven Zeitchik

   Universal and Imagine are breathing new life into “Bride of Frankenstein.”

The companies are in talks with Neil Burger to write and direct their long-stirring remake of the 1935 monster movie. Burger, who would pen the script with writing partner Dirk Wittenborn, most prominently wrote and helmed “The Illusionist,” the Edward Norton magician mystery that earned nearly $40 million for Yari Film Group in 2006.

James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein,” which starred Boris Karloff as the monster and Elsa Lanchester as the titular bride, continued the story that began with 1931’s    “Frankenstein.” A monster, on the run from an angry mob, has a series of adventures, and also persuades Dr. Frankenstein to create a mate. The doctor is successful, but the bride (who is not a central character) winds up rejecting the monster at the end of the movie.

The CAA-repped Burger, who also penned and helmed Iraq-veteran pic “The Lucky Ones,” is attached to direct “Dark Fields,” a thriller about a slacker who discovers a drug that makes him sharper. That pic is also set up at Universal, but progress has been slowed since star Shia LaBeouf was forced to pull out last year with a hand injury.

   “Bride” has had a series of stops and starts. About five years ago, “American Splendor” scribes Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini were attached to write the screenplay for the Uni/Imagine update. Their concept was to set the picture in contemporary New York, with a young woman dying and then unnaturally brought back to life (Burger’s version is expected to differ significantly from that concept). Jacob Estes, a writer on Spider-Man spinoff “Venom,” also at one point had been attached to write a draft.

Brian Grazer and Sean Daniel will produce the pic;  Karen Kehela, David Bernardi and Chris Wade will oversee for Imagine.

   Universal is eager to develop reboots of its library of classic monster titles, insiders in the development community said. It is developing a new version of “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” the 1954 Jack Arnold pic about a monstrous fish that a group of travelers encounters in the Amazon, and later this year it will release the Benicio Del Toro-toplined “The Wolf Man,” an update on George Waggner’s 1941 werewolf tale.

“Frankenstein” has been remade numerous times — Mary Shelley’s book sits in the public domain — but “Bride” has had only one other go-round on the big screen: a 1985 version at Columbia starring Sting and Jennifer Beals. In 1999, Bill Condon’s “Gods and Monsters,” a biopic of Whale, showed clips from the film and re-created the bride herself.

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