After all the killer ants and fridge nuking, the Indiana Jones franchise needs a shot of something – possibly that stuff Marion was knocking back in Nepal back at the beginning of Raiders. According to Latino Review’s sources, it might be getting that something in the manly shape of Bradley Cooper.
With obvious question marks hanging over Shia Labeouf’s current status – and not even necessarily his own question marks – and the character of Mutt Jones hardly setting fans’ worlds on fire in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, a new leading man is clearly required if the franchise is to get that long-rumoured fifth instalment. The Indy-Mutt handover, a notion if not a concrete plan in Crystal Skull, has now apparently been jettisoned in favour of a straight recasting of Indiana Jones himself.
Now 71, Harrison Ford is unlikely to be doing all the heavy lifting in a big action franchise, but Cooper certainly looks like one of the few bona fide leading men able to cut the archaeological mustard as Dr Henry Jones Jr. Any recasting would be likely to take some persuasive handling by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Frank Marshall and co., but Cooper does tick the boxes marked ‘twinkly’, ‘wryly sardonic’ and ‘adventuresome’. All three of those boxes can be found in a big warehouse somewhere in Nevada.
Interestingly, Frank Darabont’s name has also surfaced in relation to the project, in a screenwriting capacity. Of course, The Shawshank Redemption and Walking Dead man wrote an early draft of what would become Indy 4 called Indiana Jones And The City Of The Gods, and has Lucas previous as a writer on the Young Indy series. How far down the Cooper/Darabont path Lucas, Frank Marshall and Team Indy 5 might travel remains to be seen, and this all remains in the realm of rumour for now, but it’s an intriguing one all the same.