Indiana Jones ~ With the upcoming adventure film, Harrison Ford is supposedly hanging up the fedora forever. Maybe it is for the franchise as a whole.
The living Hollywood legend Harrison Ford is now 80 years old and yet can still look forward to a promising future. After all, he is inheriting the late William Hurt’s role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and taking over as the new US President Thaddeus Ross, at least in “Captain America: New World Order” and “Thunderbolts”.
On the other hand, Ford will say goodbye to another iconic role in the foreseeable future. “Indiana Jones and the Call of Destiny” will likely be the actor’s farewell performance as he has already made clear himself. However, this is not the end of the franchise. In November 2022, Variety reported, citing its own sources, that an Indiana Jones series was in the works on Disney+. Additionally, Disney has explored several options for continuing the franchise, including multiple series and new movies.
The suspicion was that the series could revolve around Helena, Indy’s goddaughter played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”), who will be introduced in “Indiana Jones and the Call of Fate.” However, insider Jeff Sneider reported on The Hot Mic podcast (via ComicBook.com) that Disney has pulled the plug on the series and told Lucasfilm to focus on the Star Wars franchise. This news comes against the background of an announced change of course at Disney, which mirrors the development across Hollywood. The large spending in the streaming area is to be scaled back as several providers are having problems making their series and exclusive productions profitable.
The question now is whether this was actually the case with the iconic Indiana Jones series. It’s hard to imagine Disney putting the lucrative franchise on hold completely. On the other hand, one cannot imagine a future without Harrison Ford either. Letting Phoebe Waller-Bridge follow in his footsteps would probably be the most appropriate solution, but it’s expected that a large part of the fan base would not give such an undertaking a fair chance, if only on principle. Replacing Ford and hiring an actor other than Indiana Jones would be doomed from the start, at least for the foreseeable future. In 20 to 30 years, a reboot for a new generation of film fans is definitely possible, and Disney will be interested in it purely for financial reasons.
The future will have to show whether the “Indiana Jones” series will actually rest until then and maybe even beyond. First, audiences can look forward to “Indiana Jones and the Call of Destiny,” which will release in German cinemas on June 29, 2023.
Indiana Jones first shook up cinemas around the world in the 1980s. How well do you know the other films of the decade?
