Word On The Street Suggests INDIANA JONES 5 Has A New Writer

Maybe, since we haven't heard anything about Indiana Jones 5 in a while, you assumed everyone involved had decided to back-burner the idea. Maybe you figured they all rewatched Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull and came to their senses, realizing how perilous such a project would be. Maybe you thought that was the end of it. 

Not so much! We've not heard much about Indiana Jones 5 lately because Spielberg's currently working on his long-gestating West Side Story remake, the production of which will surely keep the heat off Indiana Jones 5 well into next year (the current plan calls for Indy 5 to hit theaters in July of 2021), though that's not to say work isn't happening on the project behind the scenes.

Case in point: yesterday, a rumor began making the rounds suggesting that Indy 5 is going back to the drawing board on its screenplay. According to Making Star Wars, the previous draft of the script (written by Jon Kasdan, recently namechecked as the guy with plans to resurrect Willow as a Disney+ series) has been jettisoned, and Dan Fogelman (Life Itself) has stepped up to write a new one.

According to their report, the Kasdan draft revolved around the "Wałbrzych Gold Train legend", which says the Nazis once buried an entire train filled with golden and stolen, priceless artifacts sometime after the war. It is currently unknown whether the Wałbrzych Gold Train will also function as the MacGuffin in Fogelman's screenplay, or if they'll head in a completely different direction.

Also unknown: whether or not any of this is true! We've long heard the next Indy would deal with the world's baddest-ass archaeologist tracking down the Fountain of Youth, which would seem to be a far more fitting MacGuffin for any new Indy film starring a 76-year-old Harrison Ford, though it's entirely possible that this approach was in play at one point and has since been abandoned. I mean, really, who knows what the hell they're doing over there?

Anyway, this is where we're at on Indy 5. Expect these reports to ramp up over the next year, until we're knee-deep in breathless speculation pieces based on cheeky paparazzi photos.