INDIANA JONES 4 and the screenplay of doom

By: Patrick Sauriol
Date: Thursday, February 05, 2004
Source: Variety

Well, this can't be good news for Paramount studio executives: Frank Darabont's script for INDIANA JONES 4 has been discarded by producer George Lucas, throwing the entire project back to square one. According to today's Variety, Lucas didn't like Darabont's screenplay even though the holy INDY trinity of Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford had all signed off on Darabont's take more than a year ago. What specific reasons caused Lucas to turn a cold shoulder to Darabont's draft remain unknown.

This has now complicated the project so that it is extremely unlikely that the movie would be finished for a summer 2005 release date, as Paramount had hoped for. The earliest that this near-glacial project could now hope to start filming would be sometime in 2005 and released to theaters in 2006. That's not taking into account how the work scheduled of Ford or Spielberg may turn out to be twelve to eighteen months from now.

If INDIANA JONES 4 does roll before camera in 2005, Ford will be 65 years old. And if there are any more delays after this setback, the new INDY storyline may have to be set in the 1960s!


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