SAN DIEGO (AP) — The star-studded "Cowboys & Aliens" cast walked the red carpet in San Diego on Saturday, giving Comic-Con its first Hollywood-style movie premiere.
Fans lined up in front of the San Diego Civic Theatre to see the sci-fi Western's starring actors, who include Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell and Keith Carradine. The film's director, Jon Favreau, and producers Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer also were at the premiere.
Rockwell called the mash-up of film genres "a total 8-year-old's fantasy."
Hundreds of Comic-Con attendees followed clues texted to their cell phones to win tickets to the event.
"This kind of overshadows Comic-Con," said 22-year-old Khalil Tiner of Las Vegas, a six-year veteran of the fan festival. "This is something new, and it's exciting."
Wendy Lee of Los Angeles and Chris Saguisag of San Francisco, both 44, said they enjoyed dashing around town trying to win tickets.
"We got a lot of cardio running after the bricks" that contained a chance to attend the premiere, Lee said. "It's something we worked for really hard."
The couple was in line hours ahead of the scheduled 8 p.m. showing, but they didn't mind missing the colorful happenings inside the San Diego Convention Center.
"We already saw everything we wanted to see," Lee said.
Favreau said he wanted to unveil his sci-fi Western at Comic-Con to thank conventioneers for their support of the films he introduced there in previous years, including his two "Iron Man" movies.
Favreau showed early footage from "Cowboys & Aliens" during a Comic-Con panel last year, whetting fans' appetites for the film, and he invited them to be a part of the premiere to "see what that part of the equation is like."
"They generally don't get to experience that part of it," he said. "That's more of a Hollywood thing."
The film opens in theaters on Friday.
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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen can be reached at www.twitter.com/APSandy .
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Online:
http://www.cowboysandaliensmovie.com/
www.comic-con.org
