The Dead Script Scroll

With the popularization if the Internet in the mid to late 1990’s came a natural web gossip culture about a possible Indiana Jones 4, the sites we see today such as the very one you are on is partly an evolution of this phenomena. With the onset of the internet saw a very exciting time for Indiana Jones fans, although there was not yet any official confirmation of Indy 4 yet, scripts claiming to be the true documents for the next Indiana Jones installment were flying around like never seen before in the history of any movie. Of course all of these scripts were indeed fakes, works of fan fiction except one which we will discuss later. However such scripts cannot be scoffed at as they have a very solid part in the history of Indiana Jones, so much is this the truth that we can accept these fake Indy 4 scripts as the first real works of fan fiction that dawned on the internet. Today we see many, new fan novels, films and scripts pop up in a almost Saturday morning serial fashion that Raiders was made in homage to. So it is here that I believe that it is time to salute these pioneers of Indy Fan Fiction.

There was one exception to this however there is one script available that is an official script, but one that was not approved by Lucas, Spielberg and Ford (who incidentally at the time was not interested in seeking to play out whip cracking hero for a forth time) this script has been known under two titles Indiana Jones and the Monkey King and Indiana Jones and The Garden of Life, in my opinion both titles are not worthy enough to fit with a title like Raiders of the Lost Ark, in an Indy film the title has a lot to live up to. The script we have just discussed was written by Chris Columbus (no not the guy who discovered America)

Over the coming months we will be presenting to you these dead scripts and early works of fan fiction and give a brief comment on what we think. Once a month we will seek out an early piece of fan fiction and give it a good dusting off so that it can be enjoyed once again in a whole new context, such as the present climate of the real Indy 4 script.

If you come across any scripts that are worthy of a mention, or maybe you wrote one yourself in the earlier days please send it in to us and we will do our best to feature it. Without further ado, lets take a look at the scripts.

~Peter W. Lally