Harrison Ford isn’t going to play Indiana Jones again – but Disney likes the idea of a new reboot, it seems.
Although Harrison Ford might well be done with playing Indiana Jones, that doesn’t mean that we’ve seen the last of the fedora-donning adventurer. According to a new report at DisInsider, Disney is ‘quietly’ developing a reboot of the character which could be announced as early as next year.
Shia LaBeouf’s agent must be reading all of this with interest.
Harrison Ford made what he has claimed would be his last appearance as Jones in 2023’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, the fifth film in the series and the first not to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Instead, James Mangold took the reins but couldn’t steer the project towards the kind of box office success that the previous films enjoyed.
Given the enduring popularity of the character, Disney will be keen to mine Indy for his remaining value and even if we try to look at this from a completely neutral standpoint, we can probably see the direction this is headed in. While executives at the House of Mouse might point to Sean Connery being replaceable as James Bond and perhaps hope that the Indiana Jones character might ultimately possess the same kind of enduring malleability as the 007 character, this probably won’t end up working out like they hope it will.
According to the report the studio is reportedly letting the franchise ‘rest for a bit before launching a full-scale reboot, with an official announcement possibly coming as early as next year’s D23 Expo.’
It goes without saying that Disney is going to have to tread very, very lightly with this one so we’ll wait and see where this goes. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard talk of Disney trying to spin the Indiana Jones films out into a wider series of films. There was talk of rebooting the character back when the company purchased Lucasfilm and more recently, speculation that Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character from Dial Of Destiny might be getting set up for her own series of adventures. And let’s not forget the ‘handover’ moment from the end of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, either. Shia’s agent hasn’t.
The bigger problem? If you can’t make an Indy movie work when you’ve got Harrison Ford in it, you’re going to need to pull something very special out of the bag trying to make one work without him. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
