Interviews with producer Frank Marshall seem to indicate that Indiana Jones 5 seemes unlikely to happen. Marshall is likely to be pretty close in the loop on such things, as one of the producers on all four films in the Indiana Jones series and husband to Kathleen Kennedy, fellow Indy producer and recently named to be George Lucas’ successor at Lucasfilm.
Talking with Collider, Marshall responded that there’s no MacGuffin for a fifth film, and that Lucas, who is retiring from the reins at Lucasfilm, isn’t that interested in another flick for the archaeologist:
“Yeah, no he isn’t [hungry to do another Indiana Jones]. And he’s obviously passing the baton to my wife, so.”
Earlier in the week, Marshall told Crave that Lucas wasn’t working on the screenplay to an Indiana Jones film, claiming that a “really good story” is “hard to do”. With Lucas not at the helm of the franchise, does this mean that that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was Indy’s last hurrah? Marshall seems to think so:
“I say, for me, [Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is] the last hurrah.”
Meanwhile, the Blu-ray release of Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures (there’s a fitting title if Marshall’s talk proves correct) comes out September 18.
I love Indy, but I think it’s time to let him go.
NEVER!
I hate to say it, but “good.” Kingdom of the Crystal Skull went a long way towards proving to me that once you distance the franchise from the WWII era serial–and all of the tropes and sense of time that comes with it–it just doesn’t work anymore. George and Steven and Harrison aren’t the same men that they were twenty-five years ago. They think and process in different ways, and their experience and clout has led them to make films in different ways. You’re just never going to get that magic back.
Which is not to say that there isn’t still gas in the tank. Hand the franchise over to a younger writer/director team and a younger actor, force them to work with a more limited budget with Spielberg and Lucas providing a certain amount of overseeing…you could have a few more good films that remain in the same vein as the originals. Six or seven years ago, when he came off of Serenity and Slither and was still lean and eager to do a lot of his own stunts, I would have pitched Nathan Fillion in the role with someone like Shane Black directing. Don’t know who I would consider for it now, though.
I don’t think Indy is really a role you can recast…
Honestly, I’m okay with there never being another Indy movie. Maybe what Spielberg and Lucas need to be doing is helping those young directors launch brand-new projects…
I’m generally of the opinion that any role can be recast so long as it is recast with thought and care. It’s not something I would ever pick a fight over, though. I’m very happy with the original three Indiana Jones films, and I can accept KotCS as an…interesting but unsuccessful experiment. It would never break my heart to hear that there will never be another.
I do agree with you about Spielberg and Lucas needing to foster some new talent, though. Especially with Lucasfilm looking at opening a full studio, I would love to see these guys give some young, fresh filmmakers a support system in which to make the kind of lean, lower budget films that they started out with. Spielberg would, I think be especially interesting in this regard. Lucas, for all of the love that I have for the man and for all of the additional resources that he has in place, has been so occupied with the technology of filmmaking for so long that I sometimes wonder if he even really remembers what it was like to be young and hungry. Maybe after he gets a couple of these “experimental” films he’s been talking about under his belt…