Screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Inferno, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man) has revealed to Collider that George Lucas won’t be involved with the story development or script for the untitled Indiana Jones 5.
When asked if Lucas was involved.
“He’s not, to my knowledge. I’ve had no contact with him.”
Koepp also went into detail on how they’ll be approaching the film.
“I think that what [Indy] looks for and when he looks for it dictates what the movie’s gonna be. So the selection of the MacGuffin is everything. I think Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, being set in 1957 there was a conscious desire to say, ‘Much like two of the other ones were World War II movies set in the 30s and early 40s, this is ’57 so a lot of our influences are gonna be science-fiction movies.’ You got that with the original [script], Jeb Stuart took the first shot at it with Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars. That was a really conscious decision that dictated a lot about what the story would be and what the movie would be like, and I think that was followed through on really nicely. I thought Steve did a really good job with that. I don’t know that the idea was most suited to an Indiana Jones movie, but that was what we did. So we tried to be very careful with the selection of the MacGuffin and the eras to give ourselves as much latitude to make the best kind of Indiana Jones movie that we most want to see. Learning how that’s the importance of the choice of the MacGuffin is a big deal.”
Steven Spielberg had given the impression that Lucas would be apart of the film. Although, it looks like he’ll be only in an executive producer role.
“I would never make an Indiana Jones film without George Lucas. That’d be insane.”
Nobody wants to negate George’s contribution to the creation of Indiana Jones, but his screenwriting hasn’t really been up to par in the last couple of year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sHQlBj6U0M
I also think when you call the company in control of your characters and production company “white slavers” in national televised interview with Charlie Rose. That would understandably rub them the wrong way and I think the bridge was already burned as he points-out in the interview. Lucas’ ideas for the next Star Wars trilogy was pretty much ignored, so there was the assumption the same thing could happen with future Indiana Jones movies.
We assume production will begin sometime in 2018, as Indiana Jones 5 has the release date of July 19th, 2019.
SOURCE: COLLIDER