The fifth Indiana Jones movie has been a long time in coming. It’s been 12 years since the four film in the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and while the untitled Indiana Jones 5 is set for release July 29, 2022, it’s been plagued with a number of delays and shifts, including the announcement earlier this year that Steven Spielberg would no longer be directing the film. Then, screenwriter David Koepp also exited the project and now he’s opening up about why delays on the eagerly anticipated film keep coming: no one can agree on the script.
Speaking with Den of Geek, Koepp explained that everyone on the project had a lot of ideas but getting them all to come together just didn’t work.
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“I tried a couple of different versions with Steven and they all had some good stuff about them, and they all had some stuff that didn’t work, which happens,” Koepp said. “But it was just very hard to have everybody come together and have all the elements — Steven, Harrison [Ford], the script, and Disney — come together at once. And it didn’t.”
Koepp also explained that that in ability for things to come together is why he chose to exit.
“When James Mangold came in and Steven stepped out, that was a pretty logical breaking point,” he said. “It’s a gracious time to step out the door because I think the last thing a new director wants is the old director’s writer. I mean, that’s a drag. The last thing you need is some guy sitting around with his arms folded saying, ‘Well, the way Steven would have done it is…’ I had one nice friendly conversation with him and then I’m sure he wanted to be able to move on anyway. Everybody was pretty polite, I thought.”
Koepp said something similar earlier this year.
“The reason Indiana Jones movies are so difficult is because it’s really difficult. It’s hard. It has to be great. The first and third movies in that series are just utterly beloved, and ‘utterly beloved’ is a high bar,” Koepp said. “So, I did a couple versions of this last one that I thought were good; the last one, in particular. But it didn’t quite come together. Steven couldn’t do it in the end and whatever. It just didn’t come together. Sometimes, they do; sometimes, they don’t. But if there’s going to be another Indiana Jones movie, I think James Mangold is a great guy to explore it. Certainly, what he did with Logan was remarkable…”
The untitled Indiana Jones 5 is currently set to open in theaters on July 29, 2022.
