According to Variety, producers for the Indiana Jones 4 film are now claiming that directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are still trying to “coax Connery, 76, out of retirement for the film.” What a crock. I don’t believe this for a minute to be anything greater than a publicity stunt to get people talking about the film in yet another round of “is it ever going to happen?” As I discussed several weeks ago, Cate Blanchett recently signed on to play Harrison Ford’s love interest for the fourth film. There I talked about how this movie has taken over 10 years to go from “initial script” to “satisfactory script” for all the major players involved. So now after all the 10 years of effort they are 2 months from shooting and they want us to think they didn’t nail down Sean Connery in a contractual commitment to the new movie?

Cate Blanchette was clearly a last minute move of desperation. If she doesn’t work out they could replace her with anything from the newest flash in the pan beautiful actress to a bag of flour if needed. The whole script could have been written with any woman in that role. But there’s no way they wrote a role for Indiana Jones’ father that could be played by just any actor. It’s a set, defined role covered by Sean Connery in the 3rd film of the series, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade back in 1989. If Connery didn’t agree to come back and play it they wouldn’t get someone else, they’d have to rewrite that character completely out of the script! The very same script that took 10 years to finalize! Another 10 years and Indiana Jones’ adventures will center around trying to get to the toilet on his own!

So no, I don’t buy it. Sean Connery is definitely going to be in Indiana Jones 4. There’s no wishy-washy middle ground here. Connery already said he was retired and came right back in 2003 and did The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. So “retirement” has already been established to not be an unbreakable state for him.

When Indiana Jones 4 gets released by Paramount Pictures in May 2008 expect a full cast list. I refuse to believe rumors otherwise, there’s too much at stake here to be playing these games with anything other than media and marketing hype.

You can read the rest of the article here on Yahoo! News: Sean Connery still considering “Indiana Jones 4″ role