Steven Spielberg Wants a Mulligan on 'Indiana Jones', Announces 5th Film in 2019

Disney has just announced its intention to produce a fifth Indiana Jones film, which is set for a July 2019 release. Director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford are both on board, and the franchise’s producer’s, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, will also return.

We haven’t seen a new Indiana Jones film since 2008, when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made $786 million at the box office. Though it’s trendy for fans to despise the fourth film, specifically the infamous “fridge” scene and CGI giant animals, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has garnered mostly positive reviews. Although the film did rely heavily on CGI and the use of sound stages, all stunts and hand-to-hand combat were performed by trained stunt actors, as opposed to the digitally rendered stuntmen popular in contemporary action films. George Lucas stated upon hearing negative fan reviews that he had become accustomed to “having tomatoes thrown at him”, after releasing his extremely unpopular Star Wars prequels. Spielberg and Lucas both tried to take credit for the nuclear fridge scene, presumably to protect each other from rabid fans.

There’s no word from Lucas as to how he’ll handle the separation from his second big film franchise — after he watched the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens from his spot in the corner, where he’s assumedly wearing the dunce-cap Disney gave him. The fourth Indiana Jones film was, like the three films that preceded it, distributed by Paramount Pictures. Disney bought the rights to Indiana Jones, along with all of Lucasfilm in 2012.

Perhaps I’m speaking for myself here, but any chance to peep contemporary cinema’s most handsome actor onscreen again is a gift. Now that Han Solo is dead at the bottom of a space chamber somewhere, I’m relieved that we’ll see Indy ride again.