By the time Indiana Jones 5 hits cinemas, it’s possible that Harrison Ford will belong in a museum. Exactly when that will be was confirmed when Disney announced their latest production slate earlier this week. In case you missed it, it laid out the release dates of several “Untitled Marvel” projects, as well as alternating Avatar and Star Wars movies each year from 2021. Of note, though, was the appearance of “Untitled Indiana Jones,” which is targeting a July 9th, 2021 release date.
Given that Steven Spielberg is still hard at work on his version of West Side Story, which will hit cinemas on December 18th, 2020 and stars Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler, this date makes a good deal of sense. The project should enter production shortly and wrap sometime later this year, leaving Spielberg able to deal with post-production on it as he begins to ramp up whatever Indiana Jones 5 will be.
Particulars on the film are rather hazy right now, but everyone seems to be assuming that as Ford’s pushing 80, he won’t be involved in a lot of stunt work, with the movie expected to feature flashbacks to a younger version of the character (apparently inevitably played by Chris Pratt). Beyond that, it’s all up in the air, as the pic has been going through a series of screenwriters over the last six months.
Solo: A Star Wars Story‘s writer Jonathan Kasdan took a crack at it with a draft centered around the mystery of the Walbrzych Gold Train, a train carrying Nazi gold that went missing after World War II. Rumored to be full of artefacts and lost masterpieces, the train’s said to have been hidden in a Polish mine and forgotten about. That could’ve been promising, but it’s now been ditched in favor of This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman’s script, about which we know nothing.
With more than a year to work out a plot, it’s not exactly a pressing concern, but I’m sure Ford, Spielberg and the suits at Disney are hoping for a sequel that caps off the series better than the awful Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.