George Lucas Not Involved in New 'Indiana Jones," Lucasfilm Going Ahead Anyway

Lucasfilm is so desperate to keep the Indiana Jones franchise going after its most recent disaster that it isn’t even keeping the character’s creators on board.

Close-up image of a Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones — Credit: Lucasfilm

Indiana Jones was created in the early 1970s by George Lucas, who infamously thought “Indiana Smith” rolled off the tongue a little more easily. The idea was to outdo James Bond in the adventure department by combining all the best parts of the adventure serials that Baby Boomers had grown up with, plus a big splash of Scrooge McDuck in treasure hunter mode.

Near the end of the decade, Lucas and his buddy/fellow blockbuster director Steve Spielberg fleshed out the character a little more, Harrison Ford got involved, and an icon was born.

The Indiana Jones franchise is some of the most potentially valuable action IP in the world, currently owned by The Walt Disney Company as part of its purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012.

In the decade-plus since that $4 billion deal, the Mouse has mostly focused on Star Wars as a prime property, but it is currently all hands on deck when it comes to producing prequels, sequels, spinoffs, and remakes, so Indy is coming back.

George Lucas standing between two individuals dressed in white Stormtrooper costumes from the Star Wars franchise. — Credit: Disney

The big problem, however, is that Harrison Ford is very clear that he is done playing the character after The Dial of Destiny (2023). He also won’t let anyone else play the character, telling The Today Show, “Nobody [else] is going to be Indiana Jones. When I’m gone, he’s gone!”

It is unclear whether Ford has the legal right to stop someone else from portraying the character, but after the debacle of trying to replace him with Alden Ehrenreich in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), it’s unlikely that Lucasfilm will risk it.

Instead, the company is moving forward with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person POV game developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda Softworks.

An image from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, featuring the adventurer and a companion on a boat approaching a ruined city. — Credit: Bethesda Games

The Great Circle is using Harrison Ford’s digitally rendered likeness to portray the character (which Disney presumably hopes will mollify fans), while actor Troy Baker performs motion capture and the character’s voice. It’s a bit of a Frankenstein, but we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.

A new, weird wrinkle has emerged in which The Great Circle’s design director, Jens Andersson, stated in an interview with The Guardian that Indiana Jones creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were part of the game’s creation.

At the time of publication, Andersson was quoted as saying, “They’ve been constantly involved. We’ve provided them with regular production updates through the whole project.”

Now, The Guardian has changed its tune, updating the article to say, “A quote that said MachineGames had been in regular contact with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg has been removed as it was based on a misunderstanding, and a reference to this in the subheading has been removed accordingly.”

It is unclear exactly what “misunderstanding” could have happened, considering the quote from Andersson appears pretty direct. However, it can now be read between the lines that Lucas and Spielberg are not actually involved in the latest Indiana Jones undertaking, which might be troubling for fans after the box office disaster of The Dial of Destiny.

A video-game rendered version of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, sitting in a pit of sand. He is facing a partially hidden figure wearing glasses. — Credit: Bethesda Games

The official Bethesda Games description of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle reads:

“Uncover one of history’s greatest mysteries in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle™, a first-person, single-player adventure set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark™ and The Last Crusade™. The year is 1937, sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power connected to the Great Circle, and only one person can stop them – Indiana Jones™. You’ll become the legendary archaeologist in this cinematic action-adventure game from MachineGames, the award-winning studio behind the recent Wolfenstein series, and executive produced by Hall of Fame game designer Todd Howard.”

We can only hope that, even without George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, the new game hits some of the old beats.

Are you looking forward to new Indiana Jones projects?