Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) (1 Viewer)

[Jake Lipson]

Is anyone going to like a script if Indy is 80 years old?

Good point. But by "they" I mean the key creative team, which would include Spielberg, Ford and Kathleen Kennedy, plus Alan Horn and Bob Iger. The fact that they have been ping-ponging between so many different writers suggests to me that they don't yet have something all involved parties think is good, and the longer it takes for them to get that, the less likely it is to make a 2021 release. We'll see what happens.

 

[Chris Will]

If it is taking this long to come up with a script everyone likes, maybe it’s time to just leave the character alone.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Is anyone going to like a script if Indy is 80 years old?

Depends what they do with it.

 

[Jake Lipson]

If it is taking this long to come up with a script everyone likes, maybe it’s time to just leave the character alone.

Somehow I get the feeling that Disney (mainly Bob Iger and Alan Horn) would be very reluctant to do that. Theatrically speaking, Star Wars will be on ice for a while after The Rise of Skywalker, and Indiana Jones 5 will be a key piece of Disney's slate in a year when Lucasfilm won't be contributing anything else. If this were Marvel or Pixar taking a while to get one property right, that would probably be less of an issue because they have tons of different ones to use, but Lucasfilm really only has Star Wars and Indiana Jones as big franchises. So, especially with Star Wars no longer producing a film every year, I don't see those at the top of the food chain being willing to rest Indy as well.

 

[Malcolm R]

It doesn't fill me with confidence. They did numerous revisions on the last script, as well, and we ended up with Crystal Skull. Apparently no one really knows what they're looking for in a script, if it keeps going round-and-round.

 

[SamT]

And what year would this be? In the 60s?

 

[Worth]

And what year would this be? In the 60s?

Might as well come full circle and make it 1981.

 

[Chris Will]

Well, if they have to do another one so bad, just adapted the “Fate of Atlantis” video game into a movie. It’s probably the best IJ story since the original 3 movies.

 

[SamT]

Loved the Fate of Atlantis adventure game. The first PC adventure I finished all by myself without any help!

 

[WillG]

Supposedly, yes, but I'm not holding my breath for them to make that date, especially if they can't settle on a script draft that everyone likes.

I’m kind of with you here. Still no script? not making 2021 unless it’s a rush job which, yeah gives us another Crystal Skull.

 

[Jake Lipson]

As most people know by now and has been discussed in the Spider-Man thread, Sony just dated a third MCU Spider-Man movie for July 16, 2021. Disney will co-finance 25% of the budget for 25% of the revenue.

I bring this up in this thread because the current date for Indiana Jones 5 that Disney had set earlier is July 9, 2021 -- only one week before Spider-Man. And, yes, Spider-Man is a Sony release; Sony will be distributing it worldwide and handling marketing for, but its success is still in Disney's financial interest because they get 25%. I highly doubt that Disney would want to have two big movies in which they have financial interest opening a week apart.

Also, July 16 is later in the month than the previous two Spider-Man films have been slotted. Homecoming opened on July 7 and Far From Home opened on July 2.

Therefore, I suspect that Sony knows Disney isn't going to release Indiana Jones 5 on July 9. They may even move the release of Spider-Man forward a week once Indiana Jones vacates that spot. The announcement of July 16 as the release date allows today's news story to focus on the reconciliation between Sony and Disney, whereas if they dated it for July 9 today, then the story would be "Spider-Man sequel takes the date vacated by Indiana Jones being delayed again."

This way, people still know a Spider-Man sequel is coming in July 2021 and Disney has more time to announce a delay for Indiana Jones as a separate story that would not cloud the Spider-Man news.

The difference between Spider-Man and Indiana Jones, of course, is that Spider-Man is a current active franchise. It's obvious from the way that Far From Home ended that the third movie was being planned before the Sony/Marvel deal collapsed, and now they're just going to resume work on what they were already doing before talks ceased. They might not have a finished script, but they have the writers from Far From Home back, and I'm sure they have, at the very least, an outline of what they're going to do, and they are on much firmer footing with that than Lucasfilm playing hot potato with Indiana Jones between a bunch of different writers. So the idea that Spider-Man can get another film in theaters by July 2021 doesn't register as an issue to me. But it sounds like Indiana Jones is not that far along, so I'm predicting that it will vacate again. Just my guess.

 

[benbess]

During the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the year 1980 Harrison Ford was 38 years old, and he looks to me like an athletic guy in at least his mid-30s in that film. As we know, Raiders was set in 1936. If filming for this new movie starts in 2020, Ford will be 78 years old, and the year might possibly be 1976? For his age Ford looks pretty good, but still the furthest back it seems like it could be pushed might be 1969. Perhaps it's time for Ford to hang up his whip?

I loved the Raiders, and liked Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, but Crystal Skull already jumped the shark/nuked the fridge for me.

Hate to say it, but what about a reboot? Or a reboot of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for Disney+?

Anyway, my ratings for the series....

Raiders of the Lost Ark: A+
Indiana Jones Jones and the Temple of Doom: B+
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: A-
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: C+

I really think a reboot for Disney+ is a good option.

 

[JimmyO]

Silly question, but... is there any reason that Lucasfilm can't pick up any additional film projects that did not originate with or involve George Lucas?

I mean, the excuse for years about not doing another Tron film is that Disney has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to projects in the wings. I'd look forward to a Tron sequel infinitely more than an Indy sequel, and Jeff Bridges is not getting any younger (should they decide to include him).

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Silly question, but... is there any reason that Lucasfilm can't pick up any additional film projects that did not originate with or involve George Lucas?

It can, and it actually has. It's just that none of them have come out yet. There's a good chance that the Lucasfilm adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone will come out before a fifth Indiana Jones.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Silly question, but... is there any reason that Lucasfilm can't pick up any additional film projects that did not originate with or involve George Lucas?

No. If Kathleen Kennedy found another project she was interested in and her bosses at Disney thought it was a good fit for the Lucasfilm brand, they could make it.

I mean, the excuse for years about not doing another Tron film is that Disney has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to projects in the wings. I'd look forward to a Tron sequel infinitely more than an Indy sequel, and Jeff Bridges is not getting any younger (should they decide to include him).

Tron is a Disney-branded property and any sequel to it would be produced by the Disney live-action team which is currently obsessed with their live-action remakes. I don't think there's any correlation between the Lucasfilm slate and a Tron sequel because they would be produced by separate divisions of the company. If Kennedy finds something else that's new that she wants to produce, I don't see why Disney wouldn't let her, but I also don't think she's going to go raiding stuff that belongs to the other divisions already.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Disney runs them as independently owned and operated companies in many ways, but there’s no reason Disney couldn’t assign a property to one of their subsidiaries if they wanted to.

The larger hurdle is that Tron Legacy underperformed compared to Disney’s expectations for the project. They were still planning on going ahead with something for a while. But when they released Tomorrowland in 2015 and it basically flopped, Disney drew a concision that audiences were not interested in original science fiction to the degree that Disney expects when financing a project. The underperformance of A Wrinkle In Time only reinforced that belief.

Now, I’d argue until I’m blue in the face that Tomorrowland’s underperformance had nothing to do with it being sci-fi. I’d argue that it has to do with Disney bowing to Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof’s demands for absolute secrecy about the project, so that the marketing people were never allowed the tools they needed to sell the film. They had no choice to go with “Its called Tomorrowland and that’s all you need to know,” instead of revealing the premise of the film and selling that. I’d further argue that the filmmakers also erred in how they structured the film, leaving the most exciting parts of the storytelling to be relayed as things one character told another that already happened and ended before the film began. Hard to sell a film with “Its top secret, but everything cool that happens already happened before it began”. Either way, I don’t think either of those things are any kind of barometer for audience interest in another Tron movie.

But that’s how Disney felt.

They’d probably spend $150-250 million to make it, another $150-350 million to promote it, and for that money, you need to gross a billion. And I don’t think they have confidence that Tron gets them a billion.

But it’s a shame that they’re not interested in making a $100 million version, spending no more than that on marketing, and being happy with a $400-500 million return, which seems plausible.

 

[JimmyO]

No. If Kathleen Kennedy found another project she was interested in and her bosses at Disney thought it was a good fit for the Lucasfilm brand, they could make it.



Tron is a Disney-branded property and any sequel to it would be produced by the Disney live-action team which is currently obsessed with their live-action remakes. I don't think there's any correlation between the Lucasfilm slate and a Tron sequel because they would be produced by separate divisions of the company. If Kennedy finds something else that's new that she wants to produce, I don't see why Disney wouldn't let her, but I also don't think she's going to go raiding stuff that belongs to the other divisions already.

Sure Tron belongs to Disney, but Lucasfilm is also Disney, and sharing a property that likely won't bear any fruit under any other circumstances would make perfect sense to me. Sell Tron to Lucasfilm for a buck and give them something to do.

I know that's simplifying things, but it couldn't do any worse than Solo.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Sell Tron to Lucasfilm for a buck and give them something to do.

It's not a matter of selling it to Lucasfilm or giving them something to do. If Disney thought there was a market for a third Tron film, they would make it, regardless of which subdivision it falls under. But they don't, for reasons outlined by Josh in the post above yours.

I sympathize with wanting it, but I don't think it's a realistic expectation.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I'm beyond bummed out that we won't get another Tron. Legacy was one of my favorite films of all time. I still pop it in every now and then just to demo certain scenes to myself and get a huge smile. The soundtrack is phenomenal.

 

[Malcolm R]

Disney spent a ridiculous amount on Tron Legacy ($170m, or 10x the budget for the original). Pretty hard to make a decent return on that with a sequel to a 28-year-old film that grossed just $33m (or $88m adjusted for 2010, when TL was released).

I was amazed that it made as much as it did ($400m worldwide). At the time, I thought it was going to be a major bomb.