1/2/2008

in

The fourth installment of the "Indiana Jones" series is coming right along, says Spielberg.

Susie Kopecky

Indy is back and roaring along. According to IGN, things have been going to smoothly with the fourth "Indiana Jones" sequel that director Steven Spielberg was praising the film's progress. The highly-anticipated movie will be called "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." New on-set photos were also taken as of this news. Photographer Annie Leibovitz took the exclusive photos, which VanityFair.com will soon be able to boast.  
  
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Spielberg happily divulged his progress on the final cut of the much-anticipated action flick: "I'm in my second cut, which means I've put the movie together and I've seen it." Spielberg also went on to explain the process in more depth, saying that the normally goes through five cuts as a director of a film. And he was ecstatic about the quality of the film so far: "The best news is that, when I saw the movie myself the first time, there was nothing I wanted to go back and shoot, nothing I wanted to reshoot, and nothing I wanted to add." IGN spoke with series producer George Lucas as well, who was quite pleased with the direction of the film. Lucas apparently wanted to go in a direction for the Indy sequel, which Spielberg and star Harrison Ford did not agree with, hence the long wait between sequels. Lucas said at after there was recent renewed interests and talks between the three players, a storyline was built to fit reality, as all agreed to set the move in the 1950's. Ford is almost 20 years older than he was in the last sequel, made in 1989. This works out well for the series, as the first three films took place in the context of the 1930's, the last of which, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," took place partly in WWII-era Germany. Lucas excitedly explained the journey of developing an exciting new plot line, while still staying true to the spirit of the series: "I looked around and I said, 'Well, maybe we shouldn't do a 30s serial, because now we're in the 50s. What is the same kind of cheesy-entertainment action movie, what was the secret B movie, of the 50s?' So instead of doing a 30s Republic serial, we're doing a B science-fiction movie from the 50s. The ones I'm talking about are, like, 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon', 'The Blob', 'The Thing'. So by putting it in that context, it gave me a way of approaching the whole thing."