Harrison Ford: Back as Indiana Jones

By Stephen M. Silverman

06/03/2002 at 11:00 AM EDT

Indiana Jones is about to ride again, with Harrison Ford ready to put the fedora back on his head. Reuters reports that a spokesman for the film series' director, Steven Spielberg, said on Friday that Oscar-nominated writer and director Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile") will in all likelihood write a fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, to be released on July 4, 2005. The idea to do a "Jones IV" dates back to 1993, reports Variety. Ford, now 59, agreed back then to return to his archeologist-adventure hero role for director Spielberg and "Jones" series producer George Lucas. But it's not been a smooth return to the screen. (The last "Indiana Jones" adventure was in 1989.) Variety reports that over the years Lucas had approached "The Sixth Sense" writer-director M. Night Shyamalan and British playwright Tom Stoppard to tackle screenplays, neither of which came to fruition. According to Spielberg spokesman Marvin Levy, Darabont, 43, who wrote several episodes of the 1992-93 TV series "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," is expected to base his script upon a story devised by Lucas and approved by both Spielberg and Ford. "They came up with a concept that they all agreed, 'Hey this could be the one,'" Levy told Reuters. As for the movie itself, "It's going to happen." Meanwhile, in other news of Ford, on Monday the star is scheduled to pilot his helicopter while his friend, photographer Timothy White, takes pictures of pollution sites, the environmental group Riverkeeper told the Associated Press. The aerial surveillance is meant to pinpoint polluters.