Five Things You Gotta Know About Cowboys & Aliens

We mean besides the fact that we're livestreaming Saturday's Comic-Con world premiere, with Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde and more…

Cowboys & Aliens' Comic-Con world premiere is nigh. (As is our livestream coverage, natch.)

Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde are all set. Are you?

You will be, as you soon as you sidle up to and/or beam down the following film factoids:

1. It's About Cowboys and Aliens, Duh: The brilliantly self-explanatory title was dreamed up by comics publisher/producer Scott Mitchell Rosenberg in the 1990s. It first came to life in the 2006 graphic novel of the same brilliantly self-explanatory name. (If you must know a few more details, the tale concerns gunslingers, E.T.s, Native Americans and plenty of explosions in the pre-statehood Arizona of the 1880s.)

2. It Coulda Been Iron Man 3: Robert Downey Jr. was director Jon Favreau's first choice to play cowboy Zeke Jackson. But a third straight teaming up was not to be for the Iron Man and Iron Man 2 men. Downey dropped out in early 2010, when it became clear a Sherlock Holmes sequel was in order.

3. It Kinda Owes James Bond: Post-Downey, Craig popped into the picture even as production ramped up for the so-called Bond 23. But when the 007 movie got "indefinitely" iced, its secret agent became free to roam the Old West.

4. It Kinda Owes a Couple of Johns, Too: Producer Steven Spielberg encouraged Favreau and his writers to watch the John Ford-John Wayne Western classic The Searchers. The team used the film for inspiration, for a sense of the Arizona grit and grime and for an idea of what to do with the legendary Ford (Harrison, that is), who'd been cast to help lead the cowboy resistance. "I think [Wayne in] The Searchers is our paradigm: a rough exterior and a wounded inner nature to the character, with an integrity behind it," Favreau told Parade.

5. It Comes From Solid Comic-Con Stock: In other words, its inaugural panel last summer "kicked ass," per FirstShowing.net. For one thing, there was Ford putting in his first-ever appearance in San Diego. For an arguably even more exciting thing, there was Favreau vowing to shoot the movie in old-fashioned 2-D (and with no hated 3-D conversion in the offing, either). The legend presumably will grow on Saturday.