Two comic related big screen movies squared off this weekend and came up with a tie. Cowboys & Aliens and The Smurfs both earned $36.2 million.
I saw Cowboys and Aliens on Friday night and thought it was a great adventure western mashed-up with a sci-fi. I’ve never read the graphic novel, so I don’t know how true it tracked to the original book, but it was an entertaining evening and my two boys thought it was awesome.
MTV has posted how the graphic novel got to the silver screen. Here’s a big hint – the graphic novel didn’t come first.
Alan Gasmer, an agent at WMA, relates how, while reviewing concept art in pitch meetings, they first recognized the potential of “Cowboys & Aliens.” “[Rosenberg would] flip over a poster, and then another and another. When he got to the third one, I said, what’s that? He said, it’s ‘Cowboys & Aliens.’ I said, that’s your movie. Even though he had nothing written down, I grabbed Rob [Carlson, another WMA agent], who pitched it to his client Steve Oedekerk [director of ‘Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls,’ and writer of ‘The Nutty Professor’]. Steve immediately said he was in, and that he would figure out the movie. We went out basically with an illustration and Steve, and we had five offers right away from Disney, Fox, Sony, Universal and DreamWorks until the latter two joined together and bought it. That’s how business was done back then.”
Head over to MTV for the full story. Kind of interesting.