"Indiana Jones script finished by Sunday"

Put your hands up if you thought we’d all be waiting forever… you’re not alone. Still, it appears that Indiana Jones 4 is being whipped into shape as we speak. According to Lucasfilm big cheese Rick McCallum, the world’s most powerful beards are getting back together this week to review the latest draft of the Indy 4 screenplay.

“George is working on the script, which he should finish by Sunday,” McCallum told a visibly excited press throng at Skywalker Ranch. “He’s meeting with Steven next week to try to figure out where they are going to go and what changes they want to make on it.”

And that’s not all. Lucas has enough work in the pipeline to warrant… maybe installing another pipeline. On the subject of the Star Wars cartoon series, McCallum stated: “The animation is being done right now as we speak, it’s starting to prep.”

And what about the live-action Star Wars series? “We’re planning to start at the beginning of 2007. It is going to be much darker, much grittier. It’s much more character-based. George envisions somewhere like 100 hours between Episode III and Episode IV with a lot of characters that we haven’t met but have been developed in other novels and other things.”

Also in residence was Lucasfilm’s animation chief Bob Coleman, who was asked if his services would be required on the live-action series. “Knowing George and knowing the franchise, there’s going to be animated characters in there. We just haven’t discussed them yet.”

If we were in charge, episode one would be called: ‘The unnecessarily painful death of Jar-Jar Binks.’ So it’s probably a good job we’re not…