After a good hose down, a few words of encouragement and enough coffee to power a small city, the Supanova Scuttlebutt-o-meter©®™ (Patent Pending) is back and ready to sort out the truth behind all the pop culture rumours currently doing the rounds in cyberspace.
This time we’re looking at the possibility of another major franchise changing their main face, and this is one which has been in circulation for a few years now.
So, what’s the goss?
According to various parts of the web, once Harrison Ford finally hangs up the fedora after next year’s Indiana Jones 5, the franchise will recast the role with Guardians of the Galaxy’s Chris Pratt.
Where did all this come from?
This rumour has been persisting in various corners of the internet for over five years now, first starting in 2015 when Deadline reported that Disney were looking to reinvigorate the franchise and had Pratt firmly in their sights to take over the role of Indiana Jones.
Backing this rumour up were earlier whispers that director and screenwriter Frank Darabont, who actually wrote an alternate script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was titled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods, had also pitched an idea to Disney for a new Indy film in the event that a fifth film starring Harrison Ford never eventuated.
These rumours, dating back to a 2014 report from Latino Review, suggested that Disney planned to model the future of the Indy franchise off of the James Bond films, where the lead character could consistently be recast every few years. At that stage, Pratt’s Guardians co-star Bradley Cooper was named as the number one pick to don the whip and fedora.
In 2016, however, talk of Pratt (or anyone else) assuming the role was temporarily quashed when Disney officially announced that Indiana Jones 5 was being made and that Ford was confirmed to be returning in the role, and that director Steven Spielberg was also coming back (though as recently as this February Spielberg had officially vacated the director’s chair and Lucasfilm is now reportedly in talks with Logan director James Mangold to take his place, though Spielberg will continue on as a producer on the film).
It was also rumoured that Ford, who has been more than vocal in the past about his preferring the role of Indy over that of Han Solo, had even secured the fifth film’s creation by making it a condition of his contract when agreeing to return in The Force Awakens.
Despite this, however, rumours of Pratt taking on the role after the new Indy film are still very much doing the rounds, and Pratt himself even poked fun at them in last year’s Lego Movie 2.
Meanwhile, what is expected to by 77-year-old Ford’s last outing as Jones, has now been officially confirmed for a July 2022 cinema release.
So, what’s the verdict?
This one is a tough nut to crack, and there are good arguments on both sides at to why or why not this would ever happen. On one hand, long-term Indiana Jones producer Frank Marshall has been adamant that the role of Indiana Jones will never be recast, and Ford himself once said: “Nobody is gonna be Indiana Jones. Don’t you get it? I’m Indiana Jones. When I’m gone, he’s gone.” On the other hand, last year Steven Spielberg suggested that next year’s Indiana Jones 5 will be “Harrison Ford’s last Indiana Jones movie, I am pretty sure, but it will certainly continue after that.”
As for Pratt, well he either doesn’t know much more than the rest of us or is playing things close to his chest and claims to have not heard anything about it from either Disney or Lucasfilm.
So what has the Supanova Scuttlebutt-o-meter©®™ (Patent Pending) got to say about all this? Well after a little whip cracking it spat out a clean 50.00% Probability Rating, meaning this one could easily go either way and you may as well flip a coin to determine the truth of the matter. As such it’s probably best to declare this rumour: POSSIBLE, BUT UNCLEAR.
