Though Steve Purcell does it better, the spirit of the season propels me to note Lucasfilm’s apparent tradition of holiday greeting cards. This year’s effort falls during the company’s 50th anniversary celebration, as the “50” may clue you in on. There’s even some Not Star Wars tokenism in there in the form of Indy and Willow:
Regrettably, the bigotry against Bobbin Threadbare remains in full force.
Source: Jedi News
You’ve gotten your Milk Duds and Diet Mr. PiBB and found your seat again, all just in time to catch the second half of Genesis Temple’s roadshow interview with Larry Ahern. Picking up where we last left off in August, the story continues with the post-CMI act of Ahern’s LucasArts career, a similarly frustrating stint at Microsoft, the noble casualty that was Insecticide, and an only recently ended stretch as a Disney Imagineer that sometimes reunited him with his old cohort Jonathan Ackley.
It’s an altogether great read, but I draw special attention to the fact that Ahern divulges new information about Vanishing Act and Attempt #1 at the Full Throttle sequel (which was never really called Full Throttle: Payback, a moniker which he indirectly chides Mojo for perpetuating), as well as some soon-to-be-stolen concept art for those games that I don’t believe have surfaced before. (Update: After review it turns out we did already have them. I should have known better; fortunes have been lost betting against Mojo.)
I guess it’s up to Dune: Part II to disappoint you, as the back half of the Larry Ahern interview delivers the goods.
Source: Genesis Temple
We at Mixnmojo humbly considered ourselves natural shoo-ins for an Indiana Jones 5 set visit, but we responded to our snubbing professionally.
Most of us, anyway. Remi was heard to declare "I have been flouted, and I shall be revenged" before storming out the door. Now, we figured he was just going blow off some steam on a round of bowling. Then we saw this and knew better:
It is being said that Indy 5 is unimpacted, but who among us would have been surprised to see this production carbonized in a sudden inferno? It's just on brand at this point.
Jokes aside, we hope no one was harmed.
This fan is a defense attorney's dream witness -- he really sticks to his story:
What do you mean Mojo has no business making fun considering we are dining out on this to disguise our paucity of things to report on?
Source: Twitter
Here is a behind the scenes promo video for next year's Willow series in which the titular hero himself, Warwick Davis, introduces us to his castmates in this long-awaited, long-form sequel.
That was quite humorous, one ascertains. Anyway, look for Willow to stream on Disney+ in 2022.
By some accounts, Indiana Jones 5 has wrapped up its extended stay in Italy. Next up for the production is another extensive location shoot throughout various cities in Morocco. It seems the principle crew will be joining up with a second unit that’s already been busy filming stuntwork for action scenes, as this cheeky phone footage out of Fez testifies:
What strikes me about this glimpse is how reminiscent the set is of the Cairo marketplace in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’d sure be nice to reclaim some of the Casablanca vibe that the series really dispensed with after its first installment (Though we know it wasn’t for lack of trying, Frank Darabont), and surely I cannot be alone in thinking that the above location is highly Sallah-appropriate.
First thing's first: some startlingly high quality set photos of the Indiana Jones 5 Sicily shoot, taken just this week, can be found right here. The curious should be forewarned, however, that the glimpses get into spoiler-y territory.
One highlight is the first peek at the Antonio Banderas character, who is dressed as a rugged sea captain and seems to be an ally to Indy. You might think this an innocent development, but you'd be wrong:
See you on Thera!
Variety reports, along with other Disney postponements, that Indiana Jones 5 will now release on June 30th, 2023.
Though production seems to have regained momentum, with an extended location shoot in Italy (lots of spoilery photos from which you can find on the 'net, by the way, if you're into that sort of thing) now being followed up with a stretch in Morocco, I guess those three months lost to Harrison Ford's recovery made a Summer 2022 launch a little too tight in the end. CGI Mecha Short Round isn't a swift render, you know.
Maybe they'll be able to release the Bethesda game with the movie now?
Source: Variety
It would appear that The Old Country is going to be a major location in Indy 5, as production is set to move there for much of the month of October. Anyway, that’s what the “Indiana Jones 5 News” Twitter account seems to think, and not being a bigot I should think their alleged intel is as suitable to steal as anyone’s:
After Crystal Skull's Los Angeles based shoot, it would certainly be nice to see Indy traipsing across Mediterranean vistas during his new adventure, even if it turns out to be a bum steer due to Plato’s tenfold error.
That seems about right. With original Willow composer James Horner having passed away in 2015, this was probably the best James for Disney to turn to. He’s not exactly a stranger to the studio, either, though I wonder if he’s cuddly enough with them to insist on the London Symphony Orchestra:
Source: What's On Disney Plus
It would appear that since Harrison Ford injured his shoulder back in June, production on the fifth Indiana Jones movie has been on something like total hiatus, with the exception of a much-photographed Glasgow shoot in July which was carried out without the star.
(And if you ask me, the fact that everything ground to a halt to wait for Ford is probably good news. The last thing we needed was for Lucasfilm to try to shoot the majority of this movie in Ford’s absence as part of some sort of ill-conceived, Deepfake experiment from Hell.)
Anywho, here we are three months later: Filming is said to have resumed earlier this week and, seeing as the production had only gotten a few weeks in the can before Ford took on damage, will be going on for several months more, or until the whole production gets hit by a giant meteor. Which is, at this point, not a likelihood I’m prepared to rule out.
Source: The DisInsider
Production on Indiana Jones 5 continues to be well-stalked, probably owing to the fact that the location shooting has happened to take place in some fairly public places so far.
It would be exceptionally difficult to hide what the production is doing right now. Shooting is currently taking place on a street in Glasgow that has been extensively converted into New York circa 1969:
Observers have dated the environment based on various context clues amongst the set dressing, positing that the movie will depict the Apollo 11 Ticker Tape Parade. New York is also home to a number of prestigious museums, which wouldn't be altogether radical territory for a tenured professor of archeology.
Whatever brings Indy to the Big Apple, it seems like a reasonable place to set Act I before he gets pulled into the proverbial One Last Adventure. Lao Che rises again It could be anything!
As I’ve grown fond of touting, this is a historical summer where Lucasfilm has accidentally allowed not one but two non-Star Wars productions to go forward. On the forefront we have Indiana Jones 5, which has been blessed with a very smooth and incident-free…first two weeks. It seems while rehearsing a fight scene, Harrison Ford got understandably carried away with pretending to punch Nazis. Say Disney in a statement:
In the course of rehearsing for a fight scene, Harrison Ford sustained an injury involving his shoulder. Production will continue while the appropriate course of treatment is evaluated, and the filming schedule will be reconfigured as needed in the coming weeks.
Mary Bihr herself couldn’t have phrased it better! As online commentators seem downright giddy to point out, Harrison Ford taking abuse while filming is something of a tradition. Perhaps most notably, the star suffered a herniated disc on the set of Temple of Doom, an injury which kept the star out of pocket for over a month and led Spielberg to shoot as much as he could with Ford’s stuntman (the inestimable Vic Armstrong) before production was outright shut down for several weeks. The scuttlebutt is that Ford may need a month or so to recover from this latest injury, though for the moment production seems to be trying to work around his absence.
This is obviously not good news, and it’s getting downright suspicious how many setbacks this particular project seems to be given to (Forget microchip conspiracies; somebody obviously doesn’t want this movie to get made), but we’ve been here before, and presumably things will resume after whatever hiatus proves necessary. Of course, Option B would be to just do what they did on Raiders when logistical hangups meant a planned fight scene couldn’t be shot as storyboarded:
While Indy is in the infirmary, it seems that neither God nor man can interfere with the Willow streaming series, which some* have called the most anticipated release of all time. Production on the show commenced in Wales several weeks back, and it’s been announced that director Stephen Woolfenden (Outlander) has joined Jonathan Entwistle in tackling at least one episode of the season. And you’d have to have a heart of acorn-induced stone to not be cheered on some level by the spotting of Warwick Davis on a Willow set again.
Now let’s get this thing in the can and released and spawning a point ‘n click Willow game.
*Citation needed
It’s hard to figure out how much Indy 5 stuff to report on now that the movie is in production and the rumor/leak mill is in full operation. Beyond consideration about spoilers, there’s also the question of whether every stray stalker’s uploaded glimpse of the location shoots really merits that precious Mojo front page ink. Besides which, there are more capable institutions out there who are in better positions to sate your cravings for unfiltered coverage.
But, one innocuous-enough leak couldn’t pass without comment.
Some of the photographs to hit the less reputable broadsides out of the first week of filming depict Harrison Ford and Toby Jones (nice!) exchanging some sort of prop outside Bamburgh castle. (Based on the dots on Ford’s face and the WWII-era imagery associated with the shooting thus far, it seems we’re in for a 1940s prologue.) No one could possibly harvest any meaning out of such an obscured view of this unknown object – that is, no one except those with an eagle-eye for Atlantean architecture:
This is of course an absurd extrapolation that’s about as convincing as zaarin’s theory that Indy is chasing the Zodiac killer, but it’s still good fun. Of course, it’s always fun and games until somebody pops orichalcum into the mouth…
Source: Twitter
The film world is acknowledging the passing of photographer Eva Sereny, whose prolific work taking stills for movie productions includes this recognizable photograph of Harrison Ford and Sean Connery during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:
How recognizable? Well, SCUMM fans know that it was chosen to grace the cover of the Last Crusade graphic adventure, in a sense making Eva Sereny the box artist for the classic game.
Source: Frank Marshall
Today at long last is the street date for the Indiana Jones UHD box set. While we mortals haven't gotten our hands on one yet, the screencap comparisons that have been circulating suggest that we are in for material quality gains across all four movies.
The somewhat orange-y, "overexposed" grade that Raiders was given for the 2012 Blu-ray appears to have thankfully been dialed back.Temple is just looking straight phenomenal, and man, did the Blu-ray of Crusade really suffer from all those aliasing problems?
Meanwhile, Crystal Skull's color timing seems to have received revisionism of its own this time out -- but in a good way, with a bit of de-chlorination being mercifully conducted on that movie's ugly, trendy embrace of the almighty teal. There's no way to grade out the choice to shoot the installment with highly distracting diffusion filters and self-conscious lighting, though, so you're out of luck if that artifical dreamscape look was your problem with the movie.
But as blown away as we may be by the fine grain structure that has been reproduced so welcomely for these classics (and the Ray Winstone one), those movies are old news. On the subject of The Future, filming of the fifth installment is underway in UK locations like Bamburgh Castle and North Yorkshire. The production is predictably being stalked every step of the way, leading to photos like this showing up everywhere:
Seeing Ford in costume alongside longtime Indy producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy is a good feeling. Sad that Spielberg didn't join in on the fun, but life is a series of choices, and so forth.
There's some more spoilery stuff out there too, but I'll relegate discussion of that to the forum thread out of respect to those who prefer their Mojo front page without. Sure, I'm just inventing proprieties out of thin air here, but just roll with it.
Wasn’t sure we were ever actually gonna reach that milestone.
I suppose we have to shift from complaining about this movie never happening to complaining about the exclusion of Dan Aykroyd, as I predict that will age better. It is inescapable now that we’re getting one last adventure with Harrison Ford as Indy, and as the kids say these days: I am in attendance for it.
Source: Deadline
At least, that’s the impression Mads Mikkelsen is under. Here’s the relevant portion from the actor’s interview with Esquire.
You’ve been in Star Wars, James Bond and Marvel movies, and you’re now joining Fantastic Beasts 3 and Indiana Jones 5. Does this prove that, for franchises to be truly successful, they need you?
[laughs] It looks like it, eh? We just need the zombie franchises to give me a call.
But it is really funny and absurd, especially for a Danish actor who never dreamt of working over there, and then all of a sudden, I’m in one thing, and then I’m in four or five different franchises that are some of the biggest ones. It’s surreal for me. But I think it would be for any actor, British and American as well. It’s really a thrill.
Can you tell me anything about Indiana Jones 5?
I can tell you a lot, but then somebody has to shoot me [laughs]. We will start rehearsing this week, and then we’ll start shooting in 4-5 weeks. It’s starting up now. And Fantastic Beasts is already over. Ask me about the franchises, I know everything [laughs].
Rehearsing? Amateurs! In any event, the untitled fifth installment will hit theaters July 2022, while a single screenshot from its German fan game adaptation in pseudo-SCUMM will drop thirteen years after that before the project is unceremoniously abandoned. And Mojo will be here to guide you through both, unless Zaarin misses a payment.
Source: Esquire