In what seemed an inevitable outcome of Disney acquiring all of Lucasfilm’s properties—and soon, the world—Paramount has ceded its Indiana Jones distribution and marketing rights to the studio, with Disney tossing them an idol of as-yet-undisclosed value while demanding that Paramount give them the whip, and all ancillary uses of said whip. Under the new arrangement, Variety erroneously reports that Paramount will still control “the first four films” in the franchise, despite there only being three, as well as receive a cut of any potential future Indiana Jones films—a prospect that now also seems inevitable.
There’s no official word on that as of yet, though rumors were floated recently that Harrison Ford, who’s repeatedly expressed interest in reprising the character, demanded a commitment to another Indiana Jones movie as part of his Star Wars deal—possibly because he plans to just bang all these damn sequels out at once so everyone will then leave him alone. Or, given Disney’s zeal for vertical integration, maybe he wanted to make sure the next Indiana Jones movie is just an adaptation of Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, with an exhausted Ford letting doubles do all the work.