George Lucas Not Involved With ‘Indiana Jones 5’ Story

In March, Disney announced that Steven Spielberg would be returning to direct Harrison Ford in a new Indiana Jones movie. Rumours also spread that George Lucas would not be involve in this new film but now we have confirmation by new comments from Indiana Jones 5 screenwriter David Koepp that George Lucas won’t be involved.


David Koepp revealed that Lucas is not involved in the project, at least at a script level saying he’s not, to my knowledge. I’ve had no contact with him. Koepp also says that how they are approaching the next installment weighs heavily on the MacGuffin.


He said “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.”