Filmstalker: Darabont blames Lucas for Indy 4

In an interview Frank Darabont puts the blame for the Indiana Jones fiasco squarely at the feet of George Lucas. He quite plainly states that it was Lucas who killed the script at a time when Steven Spielberg loved it and was ready to start filming.

According to an interview with CHUD carried through Moviehole he says:

I worked for over a year on that; I worked very close with Steven Spielberg. He was ecstatic with the result and was ready to shoot it two years ago. He was very, very happy with the script and said it was the best draft of anything since Raiders of the Lost Ark...
...And then you have George Lucas read it and say, 'Yeah, I don't think so, I don't like it.' And then he resets it to zero when Spielberg is ready to shoot it that coming year, [which] is a real kick to the nuts. You can only waste so much time and so many years of your life on experiences like that, you can only get so emotionally invested and have the rug pulled out from under you before you say enough of that.

Wow, well that's certainly the boot in there, well done to CHUD for scoring the interview. It does sound incredible that Lucas just canned it so easily like that, and yet it's all news we already know. I guess what we didn't really understand was how keen and ready Spielberg was to go with the script.

Well what does Spielberg know anyway? I mean he's not made The Phantom Menace. Lucas makes all the right decisions...

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Darabont is one of the best screenwriters around. I seriously think that, as much as this movie could have been done, it won´t be done.

Has Lucas been lured to the Dark Side? :P

Posted by: Peter | November 7, 2006 8:11 PM

It's sad to hear that this project was so close to life. With the new trilogy and the continued repackaging of star wars dvds, I am losing faith in Lucas.

Posted by: Ryan | November 7, 2006 10:30 PM

Losing faith? I lost my faith 7 years ago when Phantom Menace came out.

Posted by: Andrew Edmark | November 8, 2006 2:49 AM

Faith, by its own nature, cannot be lost. And I firmly deffend that "The Phantom Menace" is not a bad film at all.

People who complain about the new trilogy do it, obviously, in comparison with the old one. Oh great news! So the old one is GOOD!!! And George Lucas made the movies.

So, bashers are actually recognizing that Lucas has the tallents. A New Hope was written exclusively by Lucas, and it´s a wonderful narrative, almost perfect script. Not to talk about the... THREE? Indiana Jones movies???

So, maybe... just maybe... we should give Lucas a little credit and listen his version of the facts, if he has anything to say about it. I think that he is as much interested in doing the best Indiana Jones Movie as fans are interested to watch it.

Posted by: Peter | November 8, 2006 8:33 AM

I have more reason to believe that if Indy IV should ever happen it will be because it's not just Spielberg who will be pleased about any script coming his way but that it would also please Lucas. In the same way that Star Wars is Lucas' brainchild, so are the Indiana Jones films and Peter could not have said it any better.

Did we ever know why Philip Kaufman (who co-wrote the script with Lucas in the 2nd and 3rd film) couldnt come back to write for this one?

Posted by: Simone | November 8, 2006 6:29 PM

Kaufman didn't write any of the Indiana Jones movies. The first two were written by Lawrence Kasdan and "Last Crusade" was written by Jeffrey Boam.

Kaufman and Lucas have "story by" credit for Raiders, so Kaufman is technically the co-creator of the Indiana Jones character, but he didn't write any of the movies we saw, and he had to sue George Lucas to get any screen credit.

Posted by: AH | December 31, 2006 11:33 PM

Hey AH, I got that info from IMDb, youre saying that it's not accurate?

Posted by: Simone | January 1, 2007 1:57 AM