Olivia Wilde Joins Daniel Craig in 'Cowboys and Aliens'

For my money, Olivia Wilde is good for business. Leaving aside for the moment that she's, oh, rather attractive, just read an interview with Olivia sometime. She's no dingbat, which seems to be the quickest road to success for actresses with Maxim cover appeal. You'll see her in TRON this year, too, so she's also trucking a bit of geek cred these days. And now, according to Heat Vision Blog, Wilde may star opposite Daniel Craig in Jon Favreau's comic book adaptation Cowboys and Aliens. If she winds up accepting the role, which seems likely, "Wilde will play a character named Ella who joins up with mysterious gunslinger in an unlikely uprising against an alien invasion." All of a sudden, this is a project that's starting to sound really, really good. Robert Downey, Jr. dropped out to focus on Sherlock Holmes 2, and Craig was ushered in rather quickly, although he only signed on the dotted line at the end of last week. They bring different elements to their work; Craig is more intense and physical, Downey more smooth and sarcastic. You wouldn't immediately think of them being candidates for the same job. And you wouldn't immediately think that Downey would bounce out of a chance to work with Favreau again, but he said around Christmas that he was just fine playing Iron Man and Sherlock for the rest of his career, and so far, he's living up to that. He also walked away for Spielberg's Harvey, a film that is now deader than disco. Spielberg is also producing this film, oddly enough, along with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Pretty good trio for a young actress like Wilde to get hooked up with, and the film was written by Kurtzman and Orci (Star Trek, Transformers) and Lost writer-producer Damon Lindelof. On paper at least, that's a pretty high-ranking team of talent. Production will commence soon and the film will be out next summer, and if all goes well, there's already franchise talk.