Trailer: “Cowboys & Aliens”
Universal and DreamWorks, the studios behind Cowboys, say it is based on a 2006 comic book of the same name. But that comic wasn’t published until nine years after the first Cowboys screenplay was written. The timing is pitting early writers on the project against current A-list scribes Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, who stand to benefit if the studios’ version of events is made official by the Writers Guild of America (WGA).
Eight writers and writing teams have worked on Cowboys for several studios dating to 1997. DreamWorks developed the film off-and-on for more than a decade with Universal, which will release the Jon Favreau-directed action pic domestically in July. (Paramount, which owns rights from having once owned DreamWorks, will open Cowboys internationally).
Cycling through numerous scribes is not unusual with big-budget tentpoles, but the studios recently submitted paperwork to the WGA that listed the writers as Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof, “Based on Platinum Studios’ Comic Book Created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.” That isn’t sitting well with writers who toiled on the screenplay years before Rosenberg’s comic — based on the film concept — came out in 2006.
Apparently those credits are final and here they are per IMDB:
Roberto Orci (screenplay) & Alex Kurtzman (screenplay) & Damon Lindelof (screenplay) and
Mark Fergus (screenplay) & Hawk Ostby (screenplay)
Mark Fergus (screen story) & Hawk Ostby (screen story) and Steve Oedekerk (screen story)
Scott Mitchell Rosenberg (Platinum Studios comic book)
So Messrs. Fergus & Ostby should be a couple of happy campers as they will stand to make some significant coin on the residual front.
The movie debuts July 29th.