Shia LaBeouf won't be in the next Indiana Jones

5 September 2017

Shia LaBeouf won't be in 'Indiana Jones 5'.

Shia LaBeouf

The 31-year-old actor starred as Mutt in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' - the 2008 fourth installment of the archaeological adventure franchise - and though his character was discovered to be the son of the titular hero, he won't be joining his on-screen father Harrison Ford in the next movie in the series.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the long-awaited film, screenwriter David Koepp said: "Harrison plays Indiana Jones, that I can certainly say.

"And the Shia LaBeouf character is not in the film."

Director Steven Spielberg will be returning to helm the movie and Koepp said they are currently "plugging away" at the project, though they don't yet have a definite start date for filming.

He said: "We're plugging away at it. In terms of when we would start, I think that's up to Mr Spielberg and Mr Ford.

"I know we've got a script we're mostly happy with. Work will be endless, of course, and ongoing, and Steven just finished shooting 'The Post'.

"If the stars align, hopefully it'll be his next film."

Although Spielberg is returning to the franchise, creator George Lucas - who has been involved in every movie in the series - is reportedly not coming back to assist with the upcoming film.

The franchise, which started in 1981, follows the fictional archaeologist, who originally fought against the Nazis in their search for Biblical artefacts.

However, in the 2008 movie, fans of the franchise were disappointment that the movie took a different angle and dealt with alien origins rather than Biblical stories.

Koepp recently revealed he thought the last 'Indiana Jones' was not as successful as the previous movies in the franchise.

He said: "It's hard because you can learn like if something maybe didn't work as well as you think it would well we certainly wouldn't do that again, but you wouldn't have done that again anyway, you already did it, so it's hard to say.

"For me it was the MacGuffin dictates everything, and so we tried to make the best possible choice we could.

"Not that nobody didn't try to make the best choice that they could in the past, but we tried to give us the one that gave us the Indiana Jones movie we most wanted to see."