Beat me to it…
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And NTTD just lucked out immensely… if it really is released in October because that other spy franchise just moved to next summer…
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Good chance Paramount are aware putting them head to head like that is just going to lessen the potential profit, so better to pause and allow it it’s own space, with the added benefit of giving Cruise and McQuarrie more breathing room for Top Gun Maverick before, and MI8 after.
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I honestly have no interest in Indiana Jones from Disney. After seeing how they completed bungled Star Wars, I have no confidence in them doing anything but throwing out an embarrassingly bad film with no plot and a vomit-inducing amount of cheesy fan service. Plus, Harrison Ford is going to be 80 by the time filming starts. How exactly he is going to convincingly play an action hero?
Frankly, I would by now have thought this project is deceased. Then again, contracting PWB seems to be a definite sign of life. I suspect - hope - the plainly visible hurdles are as obvious to the production as they are to us. And that they’ve got an idea to get around them. It’s difficult to imagine Ford in this in any capacity going beyond a cameo.
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Personally, I would recast Indiana Jones if I were making a new film. James Bond survived 6 actors, there is no reason Indiana Jones can’t be played by, like say, Chris Pratt.
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If they actually make Indiana Jones 5 and Harrison is in the lead role, I’d then let the franchise be. The first three are all I’ll ever need, anyway.
I don’t think that Indiana Jones could really survive a recast in the same way that Bond did. Bond was recast for the first time seven years into the franchise and was recast periodically since then. It’s an expectation for the franchise at this point, that the man donning the tux is a temporary occupant of the role.
Indiana Jones began in 1981 and has not recast, assuming the new film does indeed go forward, in 40 years. Indiana Jones is Indiana Jones. If they want to go forward with it after Ford can’t continue, then they might as well just create something entirely new and go forward with a blank slate. The time for recasting of Jones has long since past. It would have had to have happened for the fourth film, and even then it would have been a stretch, but at this point, I don’t think it’s feasible.
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It does seem like a stretch. But I wouldn’t dismiss to recast, especially with somebody popular and established in the lighter action, as for example Pratt would be.
True, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones. To us. But we’re talking here about casting for a new generation of fans, kids in their early teens for whom even AVENGERS ENDGAME lies in the past. If the franchise has to have a hope on a future it‘s got to think of these audiences, not of middleaged original fans.
I don’t think that the franchise is something that the kids and early teens that you describe are really clamoring to see, to be honest. I don’t think they’re going to turn out because it’s Indiana Jones. Spielberg and Lucas, if they’re keen to keep making such films, would be better off collaborating on something new rather than trying to reconfigure Indiana Jones into something that it’s not for a younger audience.
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I just saw what Top Guns original release date was. Paramount, McQuarrie and Cruise moving all 3 is clearly for profit reasons. Moving Top Gun to MI7’s release allows for FAR larger cinema capacity and vaccinations than its Memorial Day release did, and it’s not like they wanted to be their own competition (McQuarrie is also writer/producer in Top Gun Maverick)
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Side note: “what the kids are into” keeps coming up in here on the topic of every film series…it always sound like this.
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Yes…because kids just won’t pay to see old things…
And definitely not people with childhood memories of the first that b**** about it online for not being like it was!
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I will say that regardless of the quality of Indy 5 (I mean, it might be good), as @dalton points out, they will b**** about it anyway. And that’s even if it’s like the old ones. People whine that TFA is basically a shameless Ep4 rip-off and not something different. Then they whine because TLJ is different. And then whine because TROS is the same as ROTJ. People are gonna whine no matter what, and we know Disney will cave to the worst fans.
Could be worse - they could be Warner Brothers who should’ve listened to Ian Malcolm on this.
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With Indiana Jones I don’t think there’s necessarily a limit to the character‘s appeal: he’s rooted in an era between enlightenment and superstition, an era where a nation turned its back onto every value and belief in favour of outright barbarity and hatred. A time where huge parts of the globe were still Terra incognita, to be discovered by foot or mule or airship.
His adventures are spiced with the mythical and the supernatural. He fights monsters and their underlings in favour of a - limited - kind of sanity. With little equipment and mostly his own endurance and expertise helping him win the day.
It’s not hard to see how this basic concept is still relevant. I could easily imagine a reboot being successful. Of course it won’t be the ‘original’ - but that need not necessarily mean people will actually mind.
Of course, if we assume the general concept is too naïve, too simplistic and anachronistic to attract a larger audience, then the time of Indiana Jones - like Tarzan’s; like Mr Moto’s - would be up, period. But I don’t think so. Indiana Jones’ roots lie in the old film serials of the 30s and 40s - and he made his debut two generations later.
It didn’t stop him, did it?
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Whining fans vs. movie franchises who rake in billions around the world.
Hmmm… I wonder who will cave and why.
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https://www.joblo.com/movie-news/memory-guy-pearce-monica-bellucci-liam-neeson-thriller
Martin Campbell still directs…
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Do I need to say more?
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You mean as a possible younger lead? Well, Mikkelsen wouldn’t have been my first idea, but obviously this project has by now gained some traction again. I just hope they have a decent script idea and don’t shift it into a 70s era.