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Indiana Jones and the Curse of Development Hell

Indiana Jones
Indy face to face with his worst fear.

Then, in July 2000, M. Night Shyamalan, fresh off his success with The Sixth Sense, went on The Howard Stern Show. After some pestering, Stern finally got Shyamalan to admit that he'd met with Spielberg, was in early talks to do something with Indy, and that he would love to write the script. (Shyamalan has said he wanted to become a filmmaker after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark when he was 12.) Variety then reported that Shyamalan was on board to write, with Spielberg to direct, and that filming would begin in 2002.

Or not.

As it turns out, the scheduling of the titans didn't come together. Shyamalan went on to write and direct Signs, and other writers' names were floated as being attached to Indy: among them, Stephen Gaghan, Oscar winner for best screenplay for 2000's Traffic, and Tom Stoppard, winner for 1998's Shakespeare in Love — but no deals were ever formally announced.

Then, in May 2002, word came from Variety that Frank Darabont, writer and director of The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption (as well as a writer on Young Indiana Jones) was offered the job of writing the script based on a story by George Lucas, all with an eye towards a July 2005 release.

But here's where things get even messier. Variety reported that Darabont finished his script in January 2004. "I've finished my work, so now it's in the hands of God, or Spielberg and Lucas if you prefer," he said at the time. A month later, word was leaked that while Spielberg liked Darabont's draft, Lucas was unhappy. The production was put on hold. During the promotional tour for the 10th anniversary DVD release of Shawshank, Darabont shed some light on his Indy work. "It was an incredibly grueling experience working on that film," he said. "I spent over a year work nonstop on that, developing the script with Steven and feeling like I really had something special to live up to as a writer. So for me, it was an enormous amount of pressure to get it right. Consequently, a very interesting and disappointing experience to have Steven think I got it right and George not. But hey, as they say in The Godfather, this is the business we have chosen. Things turn out, sometimes they don't."

Another cadre of writers was then linked to the project — Jeff Nathanson, writer of Catch Me If You Can, turned in a draft in 2005 that Lucas reportedly tweaked, and then the script was turned over to Koepp, who Spielberg has called "his closer."

So now with script in hand, a start date set, and fans already dusting off their fedoras, it's time for us to dig a little deeper: Will Sean Connery, 76, reprise his role as Indy's dad? Lucas gave Access Hollywood a little hint at Connery's American Film Institute fete last summer, saying, "We're writing him in whether he wants to do it or not."


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