Speaking to the Los Angeles Times Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull star Harrison Ford sounded very positive about the prospects for a fifth Indiana Jones film, telling Geoff Boucher that George Lucas is cooking up another action-packed, cliffhanger-filled, movie serial-inspired plot for the apparently ageless adventurer: "It's crazy but great, George is in think mode right now," said Ford.

With the fourth film in the series earning $318 million domestically and $784 million worldwide (making it the #2 global film of the year), there is considerable momentum behind a potential sequel.  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be out on DVD and Blu-ray on October 14th, and Paramount is betting that the extras-laden Indy DVDs will be among the bestselling releases of the highly competitive 2008 holiday season.  As Ford told The Times: "It’s automatic, really, we did well with the last one and with that having done well and been a positive experience, it’s not surprising that some people want to do it again."

Reconciling the schedules of the principal players in the Indy series, producer George Lucas, director Steven Spielberg, and iconic star Harrison Ford was a daunting task for the fourth film, which took longer to gestate than nine generations of elephants, but its enormous success should make the wait for the next installment shorter, in spite of the added complication posed by co-star Shia Leboeuf, who is the hottest young star in Hollywood right now.  Still Indy fans should be thinking in terms of  four-  to five- year timeframe, which is still a considerable improvement over the 19 years between the third and the fourth Indy films.