Harrison Ford Will Never Be Replaced as Indiana Jones, Steven Spielberg Promises
According to director Steven Spielberg, there will never be another actor to play Indiana Jones.
In a new issue of the film magazine Screen International that hits newsstands on Friday, Spielberg promises that any new movie about the adventurous professor will star Harrison Ford in the title role. Ford last suited up in the khaki and fedora for 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Later this month, the 73-year-old slips back into the Han Solo jacket for the first time in 30 years in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, proving that he’s still a capable action star.
“I don’t think anyone could replace Harrison as Indy, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” Spielberg said. “It’s certainly not my intention to ever have another actor step into his shoes in the way there have been many actors that have played Spider-Man or Batman. There is only going to be one actor playing Indiana Jones and that’s Harrison Ford.”
Of course, Spielberg’s statement isn’t exactly true: Throughout four films and three seasons of an early ‘90s TV series, we’ve fast-forwarded to an elderly version of the famed archaeologist (George Hall in the TV series) and encountered three different versions of the whip-snapper as a whippersnapper and young artifact-hunter (Corey Carrier and Sean Patrick Flannery in the TV series and River Phoenix in The Last Crusade). And of course, the third and fourth films introduced us to Indiana Jones’ father (Sean Connery) and son (Shia LaBeouf), respectively.
To be fair, Spielberg was referring to recasting the actual Indiana Jones; in both the third Indy flick and the TV show, the assumption was that the young version of the treasure hunter would grow up to be the wise-cracking Ford. And so, despite rumors that Chris Pratt, who reminded a lot of people of Ford in Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, might take on the fedora one day, it looks like the franchise will go in a museum when Ford is ready to hang it up… unless Disney, which now owns Lucasfilm, decides to spinoff the series Star Wars-style.
