Cowboys and Aliens
In 2010 director and actor Jon Favreau, coming off the success of the first two Iron Man films, which launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, announced his next project as Cowboys and Aliens. The film was originally going to star Robert Downey Jr., who mentioned it to Favreau while they were working on Iron Man 2. Favreau signed on to direct but then Downey had to drop out to work on Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Downey probably would have added a lot more humor to the main character, although he certainly could play it straight. Cowboys and Aliens is based on a graphic novel whose screen rights were options before it was published, was executive produced by Steven Spielberg, who has made plenty of alien films of his own. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. presented benevolent aliens and War of the Worlds showed them as not too disimilar to how they are presented here. Imagine Entertainment, headed by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard (director of the alien themed film