Hollywood Gothique
LA Cinema Gothique

Indiana Jones and the New Title

Everyone has known for awhile that a new Indiana Jones adventure was filming, but we’ve all been calling it INDIANA JONES IV. Thankfully, actor Shia LeBeouf (DISTURBIA, TRANSFORMERS) put all of our minds at rest when he announced at the recent MTV Music Awards that the new title is INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. (Actually, considering how long in the tooth this franchise has become, I was hoping for something like “Indiana Jones and the Slipped Disc” or “Indiana Jones and the Last Hernia” – maybe even “Indian Jones and the Temple of Retirement.)

Anway, it’s clear that the big marketing push is already revving up. On top of LeBouf’s announcement, Lucasfilm’s publicity arm has sent out, on their own initiative, an “Indiana Jones Media Kit.” It contains photographs, trivia, and kiddie-style games (e.g., “word search”) related to the previous three films but precious little about the new production, except for the release date: May 22, 2008.

I guess the idea is to refresh the failing memories of fans who first saw the films nearly twenty-some years ago, but why bother? Indiana Jones was pretty much enthusiastically embraced by a generation that came of age during the home video revolution; many of them are genre journalists now, and I’m sure most of them know more about the films than the publicists do. Anyway, there mere existence of a sequel – so long discusses by the filmmakers and so long desired by the fans – is more than enough to generate buzz.