Seems like Robert Downey Jr. is keen to strike while the Iron Man is hot.
The newly-crowned A-lister – who’s about to cap one heck of a year with his turn in Tropic Thunder – isn’t resting on his laurels when it comes to lining up new tentpole projects. Obviously, Iron Man 2 (and 3, and possibly an Avengers movie) is on his to-do list, while last week saw him mentioned in connection with Guy Ritchie’s revamp of Sherlock Holmes.
But today sees something concrete for Downey, with the news that he’s in final negotiations to star in DreamWorks/Universal's sci-fi western, Cowboys Vs Aliens.
No, you did read that right. And yes, the plot is pretty much as you might expect from a movie with such a Ronseal title. In the Old West, a battle in Silver City, Arizona, between Apaches and Western settlers, including a former gunslinger named Zeke Jackson, is rudely interrupted when an alien spaceship crashlands. And its occupants are less-than-friendly, prompting the earthlings to set aside their differences and send those critters back to space.
Downey will play Zeke Jackson, and his involvement in this project has given us hope that there might be more to this project than a clever-clever one-joke title, like Snakes On A Plane. We’ll also ignore the fact that sci-fi and westerns have traditionally gone together like Tiger Woods and losing (Wild Wild West, anyone? Soldier, anyone?), and hope that this high-profile pic could be a winner.
It’s certainly got talent galore attached, with the likes of Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and one Steven Spielberg all producing in some form or other. As yet, though, there’s no director attached, but that can only be a matter of time for a project that, after spending ten years in development hell as writer after writer took a crack at adapting the graphic novel by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley, is on the fast track for a 2010 release.
The current draft is by Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, the writing team who contributed to the Iron Man screenplay. And given that that collaboration with Downey turned out pretty well, fingers crossed for this one. What do you think, readers?