Fans have long dreamed of seeing Indiana Jones in animation, and apparently, Lucasfilm heard those calls. A new report states that the company was developing an animated Indy show set between the mainline adventures, but that it was scrapped. Moreover, the company also looked into a live-action spin-off, which was also scrapped.
The news comes from the Wrap, which claims that Star Wars Visions director Rodrigo Blaas was developing an Indiana Jones animated series that would have seen Indy “get into scraps in stories set in-between the mainline movies.” Internally, the show was nicknamed “Reggie,” after the snake in Jock Lindsay’s plane in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The same report claims that in 2022, Lucasfilm “initially developed” a show about Indy’s mentor, Abner Ravenwood, who is also the father of Indy’s eventual wife, Marion Ravenwood. No word on what specifically that show would have been, but it too didn’t happen. io9 reached out to Lucasfilm, which did not have a comment.
Unfortunately, no specific reason is given for why either of these projects didn’t move forward, but there are several possibilities. One could be that the material simply wasn’t good enough. Love her or hate her, former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was as protective as possible with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and had no problem stopping something she or others didn’t think was right. And, as a producer on all the Indiana Jones movies, Kennedy always seemed to feel a bit closer to Indy than Star Wars.
Reaction to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny probably played a role as well. The 2023 release failed to gross $400 million worldwide, which certainly felt like a pretty definitive answer as to whether the general public wanted to see more of the character or not. (If you ignore that reviews were tepid and the film was focused more on older fans than newer ones, but we digress.)
Also, there’s no indication of exactly how far either project got toward becoming a reality. Considering this is the first we’re hearing about either, we’d venture to guess each was a project in its infancy. Maybe they had a concept or an outline. A few drawings. That’s all unclear. But there’s a world of difference between something a creative worked on for a few weeks or months, which we’re assuming is the case here, versus something that had multiple scripts and a pre-production team, such as with George Lucas’ Star Wars Underground series. It just so happens that, with Indiana Jones or Star Wars, we care about all of it, no matter how big or small.
Whatever the case, speaking to Deadline recently, Kennedy expressed no regrets about what they did with Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny and left the door open to the future in a mostly pessimistic way. “I don’t think Indy will ever be done,” she said. “But I don’t think anybody is interested right now in exploring it. But these are timeless movies, and Indy will never be done.”
“We are all still here,” she added. “Steven and Frank and I, and Harrison and George. So we get to say whether there’s going to be any more, or not.” We don’t have a say but, if Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Harrison Ford, or George Lucas are around, we’d say “Please do more.”
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