There had been talk of Disney and Lucasfilm pursuing a fifth Indiana Jones outing since around the time the Mouse House bought the home of Indy and Star Wars. The official announcement of the new movie happened in March of this year, and now writer David Koepp is talking up the challenges of the latest adventure.
The screenwriter and regular Steven Spielberg collaborator, who also worked on Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (which apparently exists), was out talking up Inferno when Collider broached the subject of the new Jones. He's busy writing the new script now. “I’m deeply immersed as we speak. All I can say is that there’s lots of aliens and Indy dies at the end," he laughs. "Lots of hiding in lead-lined refrigerators, aliens, and he dies. Should go over very well."
He may joke, but he's also acutely aware that fans weren't exactly enamored of Crystal Skull. And it sounds like he's been looking for lessons from the response to that movie. "It’s hard because you can learn like if something maybe didn’t work as well as you think it would well we certainly wouldn’t do that again, but you wouldn’t have done that again anyway, you already did it, so it’s hard to say," he admits. "For me it was the MacGuffin dictates everything, and so we tried to make the best possible choice we could. Not that nobody didn’t try to make the best choice that they could in the past, but we tried to give us the one that gave us the Indiana Jones movie we most wanted to see.”
The new one, it would appear, is moving a little more smoothly. "I really like our idea; I think it’s clean and simple and makes a lot of sense, and I feel like the writing is going really well." And finally, he broaches the subject of how much input George Lucas is having into this one. It sounds like he's not involved, much as he's not a presence on the new Star Wars films. "He’s not, to my knowledge," says Koepp. "I’ve had no contact with him." For more from the writer, head to Collider.
Indiana Jones And Whatever He Has To Find This Time (working title conjured entirely by us) is currently taking aim at a 19 July, 2019 release.