For Cowboys & Aliens, Iron Man director Jon Favreau mixed sci-fi and western elements back in the day. The star-studded result, which airs on Kabel eins on Monday nights, became a flop.
If you’ve always wanted to see James Bond star Daniel Craig as an alien-hunting gunslinger (!), you can watch Cowboys & Aliens. In any case, far too few people wanted to watch Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s mix of sci-fi and western in the cinema at the time. The blockbuster, which runs on Kabel eins on Monday, became a heavy flop in 2011.
Sci-fi western with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford failed at the box office
In the story of Cowboys & Aliens, a stranger with no memory (Craig) arrives in a western town. Here, Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) helps jog his memory. The mysterious protagonist is called Jake Lonergan and is a wanted criminal with many enemies. The strange gadget on his arm also causes a spaceship to come down from the sky, from which the aliens do not come with good intentions.
The unconventional genre mix was not well received by audiences at the time. With a budget of a good 160 million dollars, Cowboys & Aliens only earned 174 million dollars worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. The blockbuster thus became a heavy flop.
This is particularly annoying because the script for the film first existed back in 1997, according to Variety. It was only 14 years later that Cowboys & Aliens could be realised due to elaborate effects work, only to have such a financial crash landing.
