Frank Marshall Says They Won't Recast INDIANA JONES: "We're Not Doing The Bond Thing"

There has been a lot of talk about the future of the Indiana Jones franchise, and basically, the only thing we know for certain is this: Kathleen Kennedy and Disney are going to make another movie. That's inevitable. Pretty much everything else is just rumor or in the very, very early stages of planning, so all that talk about Chris Pratt playing a new version of Indy is, at this stage, not even being discussed by the people directly involved with the film.

Producer Frank Marshall — who's produced or exec produced every Indiana Jones movie thus far — spoke with Total Film (via Den of Geek) and was asked about the possibility of Pratt taking over the franchise. Here's his response:

“There are a lot of rumours,” Marshall admitted. “We haven’t even sat down to talk about Indy yet… at some point we’ll sit down. But there’s a bunch of people who could probably take the baton.”

But the most interesting comment he made actually seems to contradict the whole "passing of the baton" thing: Marshall also said that the filmmakers are "not doing the Bond thing where we’re going to call somebody else Indiana Jones…we have to figure this out.”

So...Indiana Jones 5 is probably going to happen with Harrison Ford returning (Spielberg even mentioned it briefly the other day), but Marshall's comments indicate that they aren't interested in having someone else take over the character. So what happens when Ford is eventually finished wearing the fedora? It seems doubtful that Shia LaBeouf would reprise his role as Mutt Williams from The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and take over (the dude seems little whacked out these days, and he publicly bashed the last movie, so he's probably out of the picture), so Indy 5 would likely need to introduce another young adventurer for Ford to "pass the baton" to if they don't want to recast the role.

But then, why would future movies still be called Indiana Jones and the [Insert Cool Phrase Here] if Jones himself isn't a part of them? That wouldn't make sense, and without the Indiana Jones name in the title, Disney/Lucasfilm loses the all-important name recognition that sells tickets. Maybe Marshall just meant they wouldn't recast the role for Indy 5, but maybe they're OK with doing that for any movie that happens after that? Debate amongst yourselves in the comments.