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Allen had heard so many inconclusive rumors about a new Indy movie over the past decade or so that she'd given up believing it would happen — not surprising, given the film's stop-and-go-and-stop history. Beginning in the early '90s, five key writers went through myriad script drafts, continually hitting narrative booby traps. The parameters kept shifting for a story that had to first satisfy Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford. None of them had any contractual imperative to reunite, and each of them had mutually-agreed-upon veto power. ''Three very powerful, opinionated individuals,'' says writer-director David Koepp, who had worked with Spielberg on Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds and wound up becoming what Spielberg called the ''closer'' on Crystal Skull. ''That's just hard to get to line up.''
Die Hard scribe Jeb Stuart got the boulder rolling with an early-'90s script titled Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men From Mars, a stab at addressing one of Lucas' central ideas. It made sense, Lucas argued, for the first three Indy movies to imitate 1930s and '40s adventure serials, as the stories were set in that period. But with Indy older, and the setting pushed to the '50s, the genre should also switch to the sort of trope you'd find only in that later era: namely, aliens invading Earth in spaceships with the military in hot pursuit. Or so Lucas argued, to raspberries from his collaborators. ''Harrison said, 'No way am I being in a Steve Spielberg movie like that,''' recalls Lucas. ''And Steven said, 'I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.'''
The creative wrangling continued with Jeffrey Boam writing (he'd worked on Last Crusade). M. Night Shyamalan told Howard Stern he was eyeing the Indy franchise in the summer of 2000, though no actual scripts seem to have come of that. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) turned in a draft and did one revision circa 2003-04. According to Darabont, he put over the idea of Marion returning, instead of Indy having some new love interest. Darabont was a rabid fan of the franchise, having worked for Lucas' early-'90s TV show, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Spielberg was reportedly extremely keen on Darabont's work. But after Lucas said no to it, for reasons no one will discuss, Darabont went public with his disappointment. He complained to a journalist as he promoted his film The Mist last year that Lucas was ''insane'' to reject his script, and voiced his unhappiness in several other interviews. He's eased up on the rhetoric since, and now says, via e-mail, that ''there's honestly not much to add that hasn't been said.... For me to comment beyond that is to promote a controversy that doesn't exist.'' Spielberg won't elaborate, other than to say, ''Why do you want to get into that?''
At some point, aliens got bumped aside for a new central concept: crystal skulls. Lucas has said he'd been interested for years in the real-life mythology behind them — what Ford calls ''the mysto-crypto stuff that's part of every Indiana Jones movie.'' After a go-round with Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me if You Can, Rush Hour 3), David Koepp finally came in about two years ago. He cooked up an acceptable stew of already-established ingredients, plus some of his own. (He's the only screenwriter with final credit; story credit goes to Lucas and Nathanson.) Are aliens still in there too? ''I can neither confirm nor deny,'' says Koepp. According to Ford, ''There's no element of any of the original scripts that has completely gone away. George made sure of that. 'Cause he is that persistent. And that dogged.'' Spielberg won't touch plot queries. His only comment? ''You'll find out on May 22nd.''
NEXT PAGE: The production had to build nine-foot-high fencing at Yale to keep the actors hidden from view as they went to and from sensitive scenes. Says LaBeouf: ''We had to wear robes and hoods like we were in the [Yale secret society] Skull and Bones''
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