[2]: 62 According to Stephen Teo in Eastern Westerns: Film and Genre Outside and Inside Hollywood, there is little difference between the neo-Western and post-Western, and the terms may often be used interchangeably.
[3]: 96 As early as 1929, there was talk about the need for change in Western films in order to stay relevant in then-modern America ("Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson and Ken Maynard must swap horses for aeroplanes or go to the old actors' home.").
However, the rise of the contemporary Western is credited to two specific reasons: 1) contemporary setting enabled the use of a higher number of potential plot-ideas, which "included everything from modern crooks and evil Nazis to high-tech cars and machine guns"; 2) Gene Autry, a famous Western film star, was also a famous singer and performer.
In order to use his reputation as much as possible, Republic Pictures decided that it was best for Autry to play himself, thus moving the films from the Old West into a contemporary setting.
[5]: 100 Other early examples of the genre were films starring Roy Rogers which included contemporary settings with heavy reliance on traditional western characters and imagery, such as Silver Spurs (1943).
[6]: 90, 153 Republic Pictures, which distributed a significant number of Autry's and Rogers's films, soon specialized in the contemporary Western subgenre, an example of which is also Paramount's Texas Rangers Ride Again (1940).
Some well-known examples include the original TV series Star Trek (1966–1969) and the Joss Whedon film Serenity (2005).