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Indiana Jones won’t be returning to cinemas any time soon, it has been confirmed.
The long-running franchise starring Harrison Ford came to a miserable pseudo-end in 2023 with the release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was a commercial disaster for Disney and LucasFilm.
Now, in a new interview with departing Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy, the immediate future of the character has been set in stone, with Kennedy explaining that a revival is highly unlikely.
“I don’t think Indy will ever be done, but I don’t think anybody is interested right now in exploring it,” Kennedy told Deadline, when asked whether a reboot is on the cards.
She further explained that the 2023 sequel only came about in the first place due to a desire by Ford himself to revive the character.
“Harrison wanted to do that more than anything,” she said. “He did not want Indy to end with the fourth movie. He wanted a chance at another, and we did that for him. I think that was the right thing to do. He wanted to do that movie.”
Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in 2023’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ (Shutterstock)
Dial of Destiny followed 2008’s risible Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which grossed more than $700m at the global box office but went largely unloved by the franchise’s fans.
The 2023 film saw Ford partnered with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s plucky smuggler Helena, Jones’s goddaughter. It also introduced time travel to the series, with a bizarre finale seeing Indy catapulted back to the year 214 BC.
Dial of Destiny reportedly cost a massive $419m to produce, making it one of the most expensive films ever made. On the heels of poor reviews, however, it only managed to gross $384m in total.
Writing for The Independent, critic Geoffrey Macnab praised Ford’s performance in the film but described the movie itself as “uneven and erratic”.
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Ford responded to the film’s financial flopping with characteristic indifference in 2025, saying “s*** happens”. He added, however, that he had no regrets about making the movie.
“I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell,” he explained. “When [Indy] had suffered the consequences of the life that he had to live, I wanted one more chance to pick him up and shake the dust off his ass and stick him out there, bereft of some of his vigor, to see what happened. I’m still happy I made that movie.”
The original Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, was directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1981. It spawned three sequels before Dial of Destiny: 1984’s Temple of Doom, 1989’s Last Crusade, and 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.