Last night's massive Investor Day presentation from Disney dropped a ton of news. Some of it was updates on movies and series that we knew were on the way, a lot of it was brand new announcements of projects that had never been revealed, or at least not confirmed. One of the movies that was only briefly touched on was the fifth Indiana Jones movie starring Harrison Ford. While we knew the movie was in development, it's been in development hell for all that time, continually being delayed. Last night Disney confirmed a lot of details that had already been reported, and that meant the film's director could finally start talking about it.
It was first reported back in February that Steven Spielberg was stepping away from directing duties on Indiana Jones 5. At the time, the word was that Logan director James Mangold was in talks to take over the project. However, Disney never confirmed those reports. That is, until last night. As part of the Lucasfilm presentation at the Disney Investor Day last night, studio head Kathleen Kennedy finally confirmed that Mangold is, in fact, bringing the man with the hat back, and Mangold, just played it all off on Twitter like it was no big deal.
Needless to say, yeah, there was something going on. The announcement from Kathleen Kennedy that Indiana Jones 5 is now in pre-production is certainly not the same thing as saying the movie is actually getting ready to shoot, but it's a step forward that the movie had yet to actually reach. And the fact that James Mangold is now allowed to publicly admit that he's directing the movie is probably a load off his mind. Having said that, he hasn't actually posted anything else on Twitter since his mild troll to Indiana Jones fans.
Among all the other announcements last night, the Indiana Jones news almost felt like an after thought. Because we've been waiting for it for so long there's certainly a feeling that until something more tangible happens, it's still something that exists in the ether. Still, the fact that Disney did finally confirm that James Mangold is helming the project and Harrison Ford will be back in the title role, is something.
Most importantly, if the movie is in the pre-production stage, that likely means that the script for the film is done, or close enough to it that things like location scouting can be done. The script had been the clear sticking point, as a number of high profile scribes had taken a shot at the film over the last few years, and it seemed none of them had put together something that was making everybody happy. We would appear to finally be there now, so the movie can finally move forward.
Indiana Jones 5 is currently set to open in theaters in July 2022.
