Daniel Craig to invade New Mexico with 'Cowboys & Aliens'

Actors Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford will star in a film that combines westerns and sci-fi genres, and it’s being shot in New Mexico, reports BizJournals.

“Cowboys & Aliens” is about a lone cowboy leading an uprising against invading aliens, based on a graphic novel of the same name created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.

It’s not clear if Ford and Craig, aka James Bond, will be cowboys or aliens, but the production will shoot from mid-June through mid-August in New Mexico and will employ about 150 local cast and crew members. It’s due for release in summer 2011.

A synopsis for the movie places it in Silver City in Arizona rather than New Mexico. It states that “Apache Indians and Western settlers must lay their differences aside when an alien spaceship crash lands in their city.”

Jon Favreau, director of the “Iron Man” flicks and “Elf,” will direct. Producers include Stephen Spielberg, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Universal Pictures, DreamWorks and Imagine Entertainment will shoot the action thriller.

Gov. Bill Richardson said film productions continue to pump money into the economy here and create jobs in a challenging economy. Since 2003, when he took office and began marketing New Mexico’s film incentives aggressively, more than 137 major film and television productions have been made in New Mexico, with an estimated economic impact of more than $3 billion. There are more than 10,000 indirect and direct film-related jobs in the state and more than 250 business and services tied to the industry.

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