Jon Favreau of 'Cowboys & Aliens' Attracted a Capacity Crowd at WonderCon 2011

Director Jon Favreau has enormous credibility on the Comic-Con circuit these days, so much so that when he brings footage and cast members from his latest film to San Diego, he can pack the 6,000-seat Hall H at the Convention Center. The same goes for WonderCon, Comic-Con's sister show that takes over San Francisco's Moscone Center for 3 days each spring.

Recently, Favreau packed the cavernous Esplanade Ballroom with fans hungry for "Cowboys & Aliens" footage. Sitting down for a roundtable interview at WonderCon 2011 after his panel discussion, Favreau admitted that he wasn't always a fan favorite with the Comic-Con crowd. "I've bombed here. I know what it's like. I underwhelmed them with footage from 'Zathura.' I underwhelmed them by showing them just a poster image from 'Iron Man.' I realized you have to understand your audience," he said.

Favreau said the Comic-Con crowd is different from mainstream audiences in that they want to hear people speak and listen to insight that they are not going to hear anywhere else. That's why they go out of their way to come here. To speak to this audience, it's a lot more 'Inside Baseball,'" he said. "You always want to over deliver, you always want to give them more in a given circumstance. This year, Comic-Con is going to be a week before we come out (with 'Cowboys & Aliens'), so we have to do something big, something that no one has ever done before. If we are going to go, we better do something exciting."

Favreau certainly arrived in San Francisco with an impressive bag of tricks. For those lucky enough to find a seat in the Esplanade Ballroom, the director showed a 9-minute segment from "Cowboys & Aliens," which sets up the premise of the film. It's 1873 in the Arizona Territory and an amnesiac stranger named Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wanders into the town of Absolution, a strange metal shackle on his wrist. Unfortunately, the Absolution residents don't exactly cotton to strangers, especially ones with high-tech bling.

Lonergan isn't the only unwelcome visitor coming to town, though. In short order, alien invaders descend upon Absolution, strafing the town with laser weapons and rounding up the residents. "The title was the first thing that drew me to it. I heard about it from (Mark) Fergus and Hawk Ostby when they were hired to write it. I heard about it on 'Iron Man 2' from Downey when he was considering it," Favreau said.

"After 'Zathura,' a movie with a title that people couldn't pronounce and a movie that never bit in from a marketing standpoint, I've grown to appreciate something that's memorable. Some people hear the title and think it's going to be a spoof. Some people hear things about it and think it takes itself too seriously," he said.

Favreau also likes the fact that he can show 9 minutes of "Cowboys & Aliens" at WonderCon, showing movie stars who are dancing as fast as they can, facing circumstances that they don't understand. "But the fun comes out of the mash-up, the situation. It doesn't come from people making jokes that are dismissive of the stakes of the movie. And the movie has to be bad-ass and it has to be fun. If you can get those two things together, then we can do something truly original and unique in a summer filled with sequels and superhero movies. This might be a breath of fresh air, a nice 2D original concept at the end of a very exciting summer," he said.

"Cowboys & Aliens," which is not yet rated, opens wide on July 29, 2011.