The long awaited fourth film in the Indiana Jones series just hit the big screen 48 hours ago and already there’s buzz that No. 5 is in the works.
Chalk it up to George Lucas’ loose lips. The world-famous moviemaker spilled the beans at France’s Cannes Film Festival earlier this week.
Lucas said he is hatching a plan to bring action hero Indiana Jones back for a fifth installment of the movie series regardless of how the current flick, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, does at the box office.
Lucas, who joined forces with director Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford on the fourth film says he left the door open for another sequel despite the fact that Ford insists that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be his last playing the lead character.
Lucas told reporters at Cannes: “I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison (Ford) this. But I have an idea to make Shia (LeBeouf) the lead character next time and have Harrison come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out.”
Connery played Ford’s father in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fans of the franchise will learn if LaBeouf’s character turns out to be the adventurer’s son, as has been rumored.
Meanwhile, Ford told just about every reporter on the red carpet at the popular film festival that he doesn’t plan to return for another sequel: “It took 20 years to get this one together. Nobody’s really anticipating that sort of thing.”
As for Steven Spielberg he says he didn’t even want to be involved in the fourth movie because he was convinced his ending to the Raiders of the Lost Ark trilogy was perfect.
The 61-year-old director admitted to reporters that it was a struggle to bring Indy back to life, but later changed his mind when he read the script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The legendary moviemaker elaborated on his resistance by saying: “I was reluctant in the sense that I made a deal with George in 1977 on the beach in Hawaii to make three of these things if the first one was successful. And to prove to George (Lucas) that I had fulfilled my moral contract, I designed a shot where Harrison (Ford) rode off into the sunset and that’s a classic western side off and I thought that was the end.”
Still, after Paramount bigwigs pledged to spend $150 million marketing the film and Ford committed to the project, Spielberg says he agreed to shoot the latest “Indy” film–19 years after 1989’s The Last Crusade.