Screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have both expressed that the feature film release of the comic book "Cowboys & Aliens" will be drastically different from what readers are familiar with.
"We went away from it," Kurtzman told IGN during the 2009 Screenwriting Expo. "We took the elements we all loved about it and took our own story, which I can't tell you too much about."
The screenwriters want to create the right tone for the film to follow.
"How do you make it so it's not too funny?" Orci asked. "You hear the title ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ and think, what is it? Is it ‘Wild, Wild West’? The exact same structure and story can kill you if you have the wrong tone. That's the hard part."
"It's not a comedy," Kurtzman added. “What we came to is imagine you're watching ‘Unforgiven’ and then the aliens from ‘Alien’ land."
Whispers68: I've never read "Cowboys & Aliens" but I can see the reasoning of not finding the right tone for the film. The matter was something fellow comic book director Jon Favreau also mentioned so there seems to be symmetry on this situation of finding the right tone for the film.