Los Angeles (AFP)
"Fleabag" actress and series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge will join Harrison Ford to star in the upcoming "Indiana Jones" set to be released in the summer of 2022, Lucasfilm studio announced on Friday.
The fifth and final installment of the adventures of the intrepid archaeologist played by Harrison Ford, 78, will be directed by James Mangold ("Le Mans 66").
This "new adventure" will be built on "a dream team, including the greatest filmmakers of all time," including Steven Spielberg, who was originally scheduled to direct the film, and Kathleen Kennedy, James Mangold said in a statement to AFP.
“When you add to it Phoebe, a dazzling actress with brilliant creativity, and the chemistry she will undoubtedly bring to our set, I can only feel as lucky as Indiana Jones himself,” said James Mangold continued.
The role crowns the remarkable rise of British actress and author Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 35, who won several Emmy awards for the hit series "Fleabag", a television adaptation of her one woman show focusing on life of a young single and disillusioned Londoner.
She also co-wrote the spy series "Killing Eve" and participated in the 25th installment of the adventures of James Bond, delayed by the pandemic.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge has already worked with Lucasfilm Studios on the film "Solo: A Star Wars Story", released in 2018, in which she lent her voice to an acerbic droid.
The production of the fifth installment of Indiana Jones, announced in 2016, has accumulated delays, and the return of Harrison Ford in the leading role was confirmed in December 2020 by Disney, of which Lucasfilm is a subsidiary.
It was in 1981 that Harrison Ford, already made famous at the time for his role as Han Solo in "Star Wars", had for the first time put on the archaeologist's hat in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" , under the leadership of Steven Spielberg.
A worldwide success, the film gave rise to two other equally popular episodes, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" in 1984 and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in 1989, with the late Sean Connery in the role of father of the archaeologist.
A fourth installment, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", a financial success but received freshly by critics and some early fans, was released in 2008, nearly twenty years later, still with Harrison Ford .
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