We recently spoke with writer/directorDavid Koepp, whose terrific new horror movieYou Should Have Left, makes its debut on VOD next week from Universal and Blumhouse. Koepp wrote and directedYou Should Have Left, but is primarily known as one of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood history, having penned such juggernauts asJurassic Park,Spider-Man,Mission: Impossible,War of the WorldsandIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. For a while he had been working on the perpetually delayed fifthIndiana Jonesmovie, but Koepp told us that wasn’t the case anymore.
We asked about the status of the project and whether or not he was still attached, reiterating rumors that he had been replaced, at one point,withJonathan Kasdan.. “Not anymore,” Koepp clarified. This largely has to do withSteven Spielberg, who had directed every other entry in the franchise, choosing to walk away.James Mangold, who recently helmedFord v. Ferrari, has taken over. “When James Mangold came in … he deserves a chance to take his shot at it. I’d done several versions with Steven. And when Steven left, it seemed like the right time to let Jim have his own take on it and have his own person or himself write it.”
So there you have it: whichever version ofIndiana Jones 5we eventually get, probably won’t have much to do with what Spielberg and Koepp had been toiling away on, although there is a chance that it could be used as a springboard. This, of course, isn’t exactly new for the franchise, which has been largely defined by both abandoned screenplays and the cannibalization of earlier ideas.
The second film, for example, was meant to be a Scottish haunted house movie but Spielberg ultimately rejected it as being too similar toPoltergeist. So they moved a pseudo-haunted castle sequence to the third movie, and borrowed unused elements ofLawrence Kasdan’s original draft ofRaiders of the Lost Arkfor the sequel.
More recently, there werea number of scripts written for the fourth movieand completely abandoned, beginning in the mid-1990s withIndiana Jones and the Monkey KingbyChris Columbus, Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from MarsbyJeb StuartandJeffrey Boam, andIndiana Jones and the City of GodsbyFrank Darabont. Darabont’s script, for instance, interpolated elements of the Stuart/Boam script and even Koepp’s final script forIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skullimports much from Darabont’s thrilling screenplay.
Here’s what Koepp had to tell us about his involvement withIndiana Jones 5. Look for more from my interview with Koepp soon.
