David Koepp is the ninth most successful screenwriter of all time in the United States. Throughout his career, he has worked on movies like Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, Spider-Man and more recently Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
For some time he had been working on Indiana Jones 5 but then Jonathan Kasdan (Solo) was hired to take a stab at the script. However, things have changed again as Steven Spielberg and team try to create a suitable story for the fifth Indiana Jones story. The surprise came during a Den of Geek interview when Koepp was asked about his former involvement on Indiana Jones 5 and what he could say about what he had worked on. This was asked with the admission that the interviewer knew he wasn’t working on the movie anymore. Koepp responded, “I actually am again. I’m working on it again. We’re still trying. And I think we’ve got a good idea this time. We’ll see.”
While there wasn’t much revealed about Indiana Jones 5 in this simple statement, it does show that work is still moving forward on the project. In 2016 when Koepp was working on the film the first time, he had this to say to Collider about it:
“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.”
What all of this amounts to is that work is still moving forward on Indiana Jones 5. It doesn’t appear that there is a solid story in place for it though so forward movement might be VERY slow. Both Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford are on board for this film. It is currently set to release on July 9, 2021.
