Cinema history is replete with great director / actor partnerships. John Wayne and John Ford. Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel. Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe. Paul WS Anderson and Jason Isaacs. Now it looks like we can add Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau to that pantheon, with Variety's report that the pair are likely to immediately follow **Iron Man 2** **with the long-gestating Cowboys and Aliens.
You might infer from the title that the film is a sci-fi western, which sees cowboys and indians fighting in Arizona until an alien spaceship crash-lands and gives them a new focus, and you'd be right. It's based on an indie comic by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley, published in 2006.
Downey has been attached to the project since it was first announced last summer, but until now it's lacked a director. The last we heard, the script was being written by Iron Man contributors Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, but they were one of at least seven writing teams that the film has had since Universal and Dreamworks picked up the rights in 1997, before the comic was even written, based on a single drawing.
The latest draft is being knocked out by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who are currently also writing and producing around 73% of all Hollywood output. They're joined behind the Platinum Studios scenes by Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Damon Lindelof and Steven Spielberg, meaning there are currently more 'names' producing than there are confirmed for the cast. Guarantee of quality, or too many cooks?