Slash Film has published a reliable-enough-sourced rumor that Indiana Jones 5, starring a 70-year-old Harrison Ford, will be written by Dan Fogelman of “Life Itself” and “This Is Us” fame. If true, I worry.
Fogelman was the scribe of witty pop-culture-oriented fare such as "Crazy Stupid Love” and the somewhat underrated Disney animated flick “Tangled.” However, his screenwriting filmography does also include below-average entities such as "Danny Collins," "Last Vegas," "The Guilt Trip" and "Cars 3.”
I do need to mention this film again, but Fogelman is coming is just coming off it; Life Itself,” which is, honestly, one of the absolute worst big-studio screenplays of the last few years. Critic April Wolfe described the movie quite well, actually, in her review: "The Crash-meets–Collateral Beauty false-gravitas joke of the year."
If the rumor is correct that he has been hired to rewrite the Indy 5 script, which had previously been worked on by David Koepp and Jonathan Kasdan, then this is a major change in plans Howere, one must logically think that, by hiring him, supposed-director Steven Spielberg and Producer George Lucas have enough confidence in Fogelman, and the pitch that he surely gave to them, so as to know that this cannot, under any circumstances, be another ‘Crystal Skull”-level fiasco. Indy fans have suffered enough since the release of that film.
As mentioned, Spielberg is set to direct, this would be his next film immediately following the currently-in-production “West Side Story.”