Indiana Jones IV: 2007

‘Indiana Jones 4’ screenplay may finally be set to roll!

It’s getting very dizzying on the merry-go-round known as Indiana Jones fandom. Over the last number of weeks, we’ve heard reports from producer George Lucas that he was slaving away over writer Jeff Nathanson’s screenplay for “Indiana Jones 4,” and that he had hopes that the film would go into production within the 2006 calendar year.

Fast forward a few weeks to both Variety and Fox News stories that claimed Steven Spielberg would be taking a year off from production and all bets were off to when the production would go before cameras. On the upside, Spielberg told Fox that he was working on the screenplay (following Lucas’ work throughout the end of 2005) with yet another writer in David Koepp (“War of the Worlds”). Spielberg boldly said that Koepp would be his “closer” on the project, bringing what may very well be the longest development process ever on a Spielberg film to an eventual end.

Today, however, the news gets even more labyrinthine as German magazine Fit for Fun —by way of Reuters and Entertainment Weekly — grabbed a quote from series star Harrison Ford in which the actor crowed, “Steven Spielberg and I now have a script in hand that we both like. I believe that we can start with the filming soon.”

Soon, was of course relative, given Spielberg’s self-confessed year long hiatus from production (if both Variey and Fox are to believed.) All that may have changed this afternoon.

E! Online reported today that Spielberg’s publicist Marvin Levy confirmed that Ford’s excitement is well-founded.

“[The script] certainly seems to be [in the can], but I don’t think we’re at the point where we have a firm start date,” Levy told E! Online. “But it is certainly the closest where we’ve been in this whole development process.”

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