Indiana Jones and the films that...Weren't

It occurred to me that I wanted to do a list of all the Superman Films that never got made. I'm an opportunistic whore however, so I shall save that for nearer the release of Man of Steel.

In the meantime, here is a list of Indiana Jones films which were all fully scripted and afforded serious consideration, before finally being given the downward thumb. Any one of these could have ended up a cult classic, and while you can probably work out why they were rejected, its nice to see what could have been.

Indiana Jones and the Monkey King a.k.a. Indiana Jones and the Garden of Life

This was the earliest of the rejected Indy films. Scripted by none other than Chris Columbus, the man who gave us the Goonies and the Gremlins, hopes were high. The plot involved Jones finding a map to the Lost City of the Monkey King, which was said to house a garden of Peaches which would grant immortality. This being Indiana Jones..Nazis naturally followed. Scottish ghosts, characters riding on rhinos, and monkeys driving tanks were a number of reasons cited by Lucas for rejecting the script. Too unrealistic for the Indiana Jones Cannon? Probably. Incidental 3 drafts existed, the first being called The Lost City of Sun Wu King. The most well known draft is the second, which is linked below. Most of the cited problems were actually corrected by the 3rd draft, but by that point the ship had sailed. The resurrection element did at least eventually make it into the Last crusade.
Click HERE for the screenplay of the first draft. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of his second draft anywhere!


Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars

Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars was planned as Indy 4, fresh from the momentum of the Holy Grail quest. Production began in the 1990s. The prologue is set in Borneo in 1949, with Indiana Jones proposing to Dr. Elaine McGregor after defeating pirates. She abandons him at the altar, because the government requests her aid in decoding an alien cylinder (covered in Egyptian, Mayan and Sanskrit symbols) in New Mexico. Indiana pursues her, and battles Russians agents, meddlesome CIA agents and US soldiers, and spider-like aliens, for the cylinder, which turns out to be a timebomb. The film was scrapped and eventually some elements of it made their way into Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Most notably the opening sequence). Harrison Ford in particular has stated that he wasn't keen on UFO's or Aliens, believing them to be out of place in an Indianna Jones film
The script was originally leaked on the Internet but has since been removed, and most traces of it have now gone. I'm a complete dork, and I have the full Draft Screenplay, but just for you guys, I dug this out HERE



Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods

Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods is regarded by most as an early version of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Written by Frank Darabont, at least 3 drafts were made before Lucas rejected it in 2004. The unusual thing was that Spielberg had read the 3rd draft and is reported as saying it was the best new Indy he'd read since the Last Crusade.
City of the Gods included elements 'suggested' by George Lucas throughout the film's long development: a late 1950s setting, the presence of the Red Scare, aliens, UFOs, Soviet agents, army ants, somebody swinging on a vine, a chase on a rocket-sled and Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast inside a lead-lined refrigerator. incidental these all made it into Crystal Skull, but there were enough plot differences to regard it as its own separate film
The full Screenplay can be found HERE