Another two years have been added to the production schedule for the next adventure in the “Indiana Jones” saga, now due July 2021.
Telling the swashbuckling tales of an adventurous, persistent, and ingenious archeologist, the “Indiana Jones” franchise has racked up $1.9 billion dollars in box office revenue.
With Harrison Ford in the lead role following his breakthrough in “Star Wars,” the initial “Indiana Jones” trilogy released between 1981 and 1989, created by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg.
Fans will need to wait a little longer to see if the franchise can recover its luster after a largely disappointing fourth outing, 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull,” which nevertheless accumulated $786m USD worldwide, four times its production budget.
The fifth film is likely to be Ford’s last contribution to the franchise, the actor having retired from a resurrected “Star Wars” after 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” then revisiting the “Blade Runner” universe in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049.”
Initially proposed for a July 2019 release after Disney laid out its plans in March 2016, just over a year later “Indiana Jones 5” was moved to July 2020 before being taken off the release schedule in late June of 2018.
Disney’s latest calendar rearrangement now places “Indiana Jones 5” on July 9, 2021, with “Maleficent 2” setting itself up for a late May 2020 bow and Dwayne Johnson vehicle “Jungle Cruise” taking an October 2019 spot.
It means the intrepid Professor Jones will return just over 40 years since his 1981 debut; Harrison Ford will be 79, having worked from a script revised by Jonathan Kasdan, the son of the first film’s writer.
