Lucasfilm President Says Studio “Would Never” Make Indiana Jones Movie Without Harrison Ford

With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, the inclusion of Shia LaBeouf as Indiana and Marion Ravenwood’s son made some audiences apprehensive that the character was set to take up the mantle of the explorer, only for the final scene to confirm that only Harrison Ford would sport the iconic fedora. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy recently confirmed this point, noting that, having attempted to replicate the swagger of Han Solo with Alden Ehrenreich in Solo: A Star Wars Story, seeing Ford as the character in Indiana Jones 5 hammered home the point that the studio would never attempt to find another performer to embody the iconic figure.

“There should be moments along the way when you learn things. [Solo] may have certainly been a learning moment,” Kennedy shared with Vanity Fair. “Some people have talked about how, well, maybe Solo should have been a TV show. But even doing Solo as a TV show without Harrison Ford as Han Solo … It’s the same thinking. Maybe I should have recognized this before. We would never make Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford. Having just finished the fifth movie, I can tell you, there wasn’t a day I wasn’t on set where I wasn’t like, ‘Yes — this is Indiana Jones.’”

She continued, “Maybe I’m closer to the DNA of Indy, and always have been, than I was when I came into Star Wars, because now it does seem so abundantly clear that we can’t do that. You get excited by these things, and you want to revisit things you want. You want to have that feeling again, and you’re trying to resurrect that. I think that’s what we do even with our new characters. With Star Wars, everybody talks about a ‘feeling’ they have about Star Wars. That’s that intangible idea that you’re looking for.”

While LaBeouf might not have stepped into the shoes of Indiana, Lucasfilm did previously attempt to channel the charm and the charisma of the character with the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Regardless of what the studio might have explored in the past, it seems as though, while we can’t rule out a new character emerging that honors the spirit of Indiana, we shouldn’t ever expect anyone to be tasked with offering their own take on the figure.

Indiana Jones 5 is currently slated to hit theaters on June 30, 2023.

Are you glad there will ever only be one Indiana Jones? Let us know in the comments below!