While Star Wars Celebration may be focused on all things from George Lucas’ sci-fi franchise, Lucasfilm’s also using the annual convention to highlight other franchises it owns. After what feels like an eternity, we finally got a tiny first look at Indiana Jones 5, with a picture that gives the impression this’ll be the closing chapter for the character.
During the film’s brief portion of Lucasfilm’s panel, Harrison Ford himself took to the stage after an orchestral version of the theme performed by John Williams. Assuring fans that they’ve “almost completed” Indy 5, Ford confirmed that yes, Williams is returning to do the score, and that he’s excited for fans to see what they’ve got. “I’m really proud of the movie we made... I’ll be seeing you around campus,” he told the crowd, as reported by io9 staffers in attendance.
The new film brings back Ford’s adventurer archaeologist, last seen getting married to Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood and using fridges to survive nuclear explosions. But there’s always a new artifact to go searching for, and this new film sees him cross paths with Mads Mikkelsen’s villain on a hunt for a new object that could potentially spell doom for the world in the wrong hands. Indy 5 has been in development for a long time—since Crystal Skull was released in 2008, basically—with Logan director James Mangold stepping in to direct after Steven Spielberg departed. It sounds very much like the return to form that fans have been hoping it would be, and the new cast additions of Mikkelsen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Antonio Banderas should serve as solid shake-ups for our hero.
Whether or not this is Ford’s last hurrah as the title character, we know there’ll be a little more Indy in Lucasfilm’s future. MachineGames, the studio behind Bethesda’s Wolfenstein reboot, is taking a crack at an Indiana Jones video game in the near future. What else will follow from that is up in the air, but as another franchise has said, no one’s ever truly gone.
Look for Indiana Jones 5 to hit theaters on June 30, 2023.
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