Lucasfilm isn’t in danger of running out of content to make any time soon. They’re running full speed ahead with Star Wars material, including a number of movies and shows that are currently in development. There’s never been a time with more Star Wars content than we’re getting right now, and it’s wonderful.
But it seems that the company will be almost exclusively focusing on Star Wars for the foreseeable future. After producing a Willow series for Disney+, the series was pulled from the streaming service and won’t be getting a second season. A fifth Indiana Jones film, Dial of Destiny, was just released in theaters, and it has been widely stated that it’s the final time that Harrison Ford will play the character.
So will the franchise keep going? The short answer is that there are no current plans to continue it.
In celebration of Dial of Destiny‘s release, Games Radar did an interview with Lucasfilm President Kathy Kennedy and her husband, Frank Marshall, both of whom produced the movie (and both have worked on all five Indiana Jones films). Marshall joked about a spinoff about the character he played as a cameo in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and then Kennedy explained that they’re not exploring further stories right now – without closing the door entirely on something coming down the road.
“We’re in a culture now where I think that that’s an expectation from the audience [to continue stories with other characters]. They think, ‘Oh, that’s what’s going to happen next.’ Right now, we’re all just very focused on just allowing this to have its moment and its time and be complete. And if we go on and do animation, or we carry on with Short Round – which certainly with Ke Huy Quan being so popular now coming off of Everything [Everywhere All at Once] – and Phoebe, what a wonderful actress she is. So I would never sit here and say, ‘Never say never.’ But it’s not something that we’re in the midst of developing at the moment.”
There actually had been some internal conversations at Lucasfilm reported last year about developing an Indiana Jones series for Disney+ to keep the franchise going, and it was rumored to be about Abner Ravenwood. Those discussions were shelved and the series isn’t moving forward, but Dial of Destiny director James Mangold recently acknowledged seeing some “purely speculative” ideas for a show, which wouldn’t have included Indiana Jones himself. For the time being, however, it seems that the franchise will get a rest, something Lucasfilm has the freedom to do given it’s massive slate of upcoming Star Wars content.
The question of whether the Indiana Jones franchise should keep going is, of course, another matter entirely. The stories are so tied up in the central character that a spinoff about a side character would be a harder sell (though I’d certainly still watch), and it’s hard to imagine anyone but Harrison Ford actually playing him. When you think about Hollywood’s biggest movie franchises, it could easily be argued that the character of Indiana Jones is as central to his franchise’s success as any, and it could also be argued that Harrison Ford is as synonymous with the character as any actor is with their respective role. Which is to say that continuing the franchise post-Ford would be difficult, at the very least. Part of what makes the Star Wars franchise so ripe for further stories and exploration is that the galaxy itself is incredibly interesting, and there are tons of stories and characters and eras to explore. The success of Star Wars isn’t dependent on one character, and most fans of the franchise love the galaxy itself. With Indiana Jones, though, it’d be hard to explore different eras and characters because of how closely tied up with the titular character these stories are.
Because of all that, I’d be completely ok if Dial of Destiny is the last story in the franchise. I’m a big Indiana Jones fan, but I’m not going to be disappointed if they let it rest. I’d certainly watch anything they decide to do with it, but I’m not convinced it’s necessary. If anything, the best option to me would seem to be an animated series, which Kennedy actually mentioned. Lucasfilm’s animation team does fantastic work, and some of the very best Star Wars material ever made is animated. It seems to have fallen out of favor a bit in Disney’s era of live-action and streaming, but for franchises like both Star Wars and Indiana Jones that include beloved older characters, animation is a medium that makes it easier to continue these stories even as the original actors age. Indy would fit into a serialized format, and it could be a way of spinning off different stories and characters through it.
A compromise approach could be an intriguing option for Lucasfilm too, though it might be a more interesting sell. The Star Wars character Doctor Aphra, who has appeared in plenty of comics in recent years, is an Indiana Jones-esque explorer who collects artifacts, goes on adventures, winds up in trouble, and comes into contact with some of the galaxy’s most known figures during the Galactic Civil War. It wouldn’t be a continuation of the Indiana Jones franchise or anything, but if Lucasfilm wants to keep leaning into some of the themes of Indy they could do so while still exploring the Star Wars galaxy through Aphra. An Indy-like adventure set in Star Wars, with Aphra pursuing an ancient artifact that others are after too, could be interesting.
These are all just ideas and speculation, and it sounds like, at least for the time being, there are no plans to continue the Indiana Jones franchise. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
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