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Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman Talk Cowboys and Aliens, Star Trek 2

After writing two of 2009's biggest hits (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek), screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci seem to have their quills in every movie in development. Their latest project, Cowboys and Aliens, is currently shooting in New Mexico under the direction of Jon Favreau with a growing ensemble cast that includes Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, and Harrison Ford. Before attending the 2010 Saturn Awards, Orci told Collider that the duo "never thought" Ford would agree to appear in the movie, and discussed the process of bringing him into the cast.

I don't know if it's some kind of magical thing that [Cowboys and Aliens producer] Steven Spielberg did, because they're all friends, maybe he mentioned it or left it in the back of his car, I don't know how he...but we just heard a rumor that he might want to do something like this and the minute we heard that rumor we had to go chase him and beg him and it turned out he was open to it. He just wanted to sit down and he came in and looked at the art to make sure that we were all speaking the same language tonally and visually, and just in sitting with him, it looked like we were all going to be able to get along and he wasn't going to completely, you know, kill us.

While both writers agree that Ford's character will be "grizzled," they also say that Ford's character will be a throwback for fans of his previous movies.

What a lot of fans will love about it is its a throwback to, certainly, a lot of what we loved about Raiders [of the Lost Ark] and what he was in Raiders.

While Craig leads the cast, Robert Downey, Jr. was initially set to play Zeke Jackson, the cowboy who leads the resistance against an alien invasion in 1870s Arizona. Craig replaced Downey Jr. when the Iron Man actor left the project to make Sherlock Holmes 2. Kurtzman said that the casting change didn't change the story or the structure of the script but caused the character to become more "specific."

We had been talking broadly with Downey beforehand, and then I think as the story evolved it also felt like the character changed somewhat. Daniel feels like the perfect version for us. I think that the thing that's so wonderful about Daniel is that he says an enormous amount just with his expressions, with his face, that's just his incredible strength as an actor. I think the Western is typically a genre that is very sparse in dialogue in general. So he really felt to us like a perfect mix. And the last couple months have really been about sitting in a room with the cast and talking to them, and riffing out different versions of scenes, and it's been, you know, for us, an incredible dream come true to be in there with Harrison and Daniel and Olivia and Sam — it's amazing. We couldn't be more thrilled about that.

While shooting is ongoing for Cowboys and Aliens, Kurtzman admitted that the duo will be teaming up with co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof "next week" to finish work on the script for Star Trek 2. Orci says the story for the anticipated sequel is about halfway done.

I'd say we're halfway through the story. Halfway through all of us going back over what we've talked about and seeing if it really sticks. We've built a little "Jenga" castle, storywise, and now we're gonna go pick at it and pull at it and if it stays standing, we'll know what we have.

Kurtzman says the three writers are still "circling" a villain for the sequel, but the real challenge is "making sure that you are still telling the story of this bridge crew as we established them in the first movie." Star Trek 2 opens June 29, 2012.