Spielberg Courts Stoppard

The hallowed trio behind the Indiana Jones movies are apparently courting a British playwright to produce the script for the much-anticipated Indiana Jones 4. According to a report in today's Variety, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford are all keen on Britain's Tom Stoppard to do the writing honours for the fourth outing in the Indiana Jones franchise. Stoppard, whose last script was for the Mick Jagger produced film Enigma, is much in demand it seems, and the Jones trio will have to persuade him that they need him more than Stoppard's Shakespeare in Love collaborator John Madden who wants to work with him on the film adaptation of Tulip Fever. Speaking to Empire magazine this month, Harrison Ford denied that he was getting too old in the tooth for the action hero role. 'There is no barrier to Indiana Jones growing older,' he told the magazine. 'It's not an age-based character.' However Ford did concede that there may be limitations. 'We can't bang him up as much as we used to, maybe. But I guess I can pretend to have the capacity as well as I pretended before. You can read the full interview with Harrison Ford in the June issue of Empire magazine which is out on 26 April.