Rumor: 'Indiana Jones 5' Now Being Written By 'This Is Us' Creator; Learn Plot Details Of Jon Kasdan's Abandoned Draft [Updated]

Update: We've heard from a source close to the production that some of this rumored information is inaccurate. Read on for the details.

Last year, we found out that David Koepp, who wrote Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was being replaced by Solo: A Star Wars Story's Jonathan Kasdan as the Indiana Jones 5 writer. Kasdan reportedly started from scratch on a new draft, bumping the film's release date back in the process. (Director Steven Spielberg is busy with his West Side Story remake anyway.)

Now a new rumor says This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman is the latest writer to come on board, and that his new script will have an entirely different premise than Kasdan's. Find out what Kasdan's story was going to be about below.

Jason Ward over at MakingStarWars reports that Indiana Jones 5 will now be written by Dan Fogelman, the creator of the weepy NBC mega-hit This Is Us and the writer of films like Cars, Fred Claus, Last Vegas, and Life Itself. According to MSW's sources, Fogelman is apparently switching up the whole premise of the movie from what Kasdan was working on. The report says:

My sources believe the idea for the Kasdan Indy 5 script Jon Kasdan was working on focused on the Walbrzych Gold Train legend. Supposedly, a train full of Nazi gold went missing near the Polish city of Walbrzych . The train departed from Breslau with gold, masterpieces, weapons and other unknown priceless artifacts. It was then hidden in a series of mines dug by the Nazis.

We have reached out to our own sources and will update this post should we learn anything else.

Update: One of our own sources close to the production reveals that Kasdan's script did not involve the Nazi gold train story, but confirmed that Kasdan is no longer working on the project. We haven't been able to independently confirm Dan Fogelman's involvement, but we'll update this piece again if we learn more. Our original article follows.

Kasdan's idea sounds pretty cool, and that gold train angle was a way to incorporated the Nazis (the best villains of the Indy franchise) back into the story years after World War II. (I'm guessing the movie will be set long before 2016, when Nazis came crawling out from the rocks they were hiding under and emerged into our society again.) MSW says they aren't sure what Fogelman's angle will be, or what McGuffin he'll be using, but their sources indicate that it's not going to be the search for missing Nazi gold.

It should be mentioned that last we heard, producer Frank Marshall was "gathering info" from an unofficial Indiana Jones 5 writers' room, where "a lot of people that we trust pitch ideas and things." Maybe Fogelman was a part of this brain trust.

In any case, Fogelman seems like an odd fit for this franchise. He has writing credits on a few solid movies – Tangled, Bolt, and Crazy, Stupid, Love – but there are more clunkers on his resume than creative successes (at least in my eyes). And if Fogelman reacted this badly to terrible reviews of his movie Life Itself, imagine how he'll respond when critics inevitably raise any issues with the script of a new Indy movie. That'll be fun!

Indiana Jones 5 is set to hit theaters on July 9, 2021.