Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the context of "Indiana Jones"

David Koepp (/kɛp/; born June 9, 1963) is an American screenwriter and director. He is the fourth most successful screenwriter of all time in terms of U.S. box office receipts with a total gross of over $2.6 billion. Koepp has achieved both critical and commercial success in a wide variety of genres.

He is known for a variety of screenplays, including those of the Steven Spielberg–directed films Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), War of the Worlds (2005) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Other Koepp screenplays include those for the crime film Carlito's Way (1993); the action spy films Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014); the superhero film Spider-Man (2002); another Indiana Jones film, The Dial of Destiny (2023); and another Jurassic Park film, Jurassic World Rebirth (2025). Koepp has also directed seven feature films over the course of his career: The Trigger Effect (1996), Stir of Echoes (1999), Secret Window (2004), Ghost Town (2008), Premium Rush (2012), Mortdecai (2015), and You Should Have Left (2020).

George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman of Lucasfilm before selling it to the Walt Disney Company in 2012. Nominated for four Academy Awards, he is considered to be one of the most significant figures of the 20th-century New Hollywood movement, and a pioneer of the modern blockbuster. Despite this, he has remained an independent filmmaker for most of his career.

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas moved to San Francisco and co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. He wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), based on his student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure. His next work as a writer-director was American Graffiti (1973), inspired by his youth in early 1960s Modesto, California, and produced through the newly founded Lucasfilm. The film was critically and commercially successful and received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Lucas's next film, the epic space opera Star Wars (1977), later retitled A New Hope, had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and co-wrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). With director Steven Spielberg, he created, produced, and co-wrote Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989) and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and served as an executive producer, with a cursory involvement in pre and post-production, on The Dial of Destiny (2023).

Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., often called "Indy" for short, is the title character and protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials. The character first appeared in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, to be followed by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles from 1992 to 1996, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2023. The character is also featured in novels, comics, video games, and other media. Jones is also the inspiration for several Disney theme park attractions, including Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril, the Indiana Jones Adventure, and Epic Stunt Spectacular! attractions.

Jones is most famously portrayed by Harrison Ford and has also been portrayed by River Phoenix (as the young Jones in The Last Crusade), and by Corey Carrier, Sean Patrick Flanery, and George Hall in the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Doug Lee has supplied the voice of Jones for two LucasArts video games, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, David Esch supplied his voice for Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, and John Armstrong for Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings. Troy Baker provides the voice and motion capture for the character in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024).

Marion Ravenwood is a fictional character who first appeared in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Played by Karen Allen, she enters the story when Indiana Jones visits her in Nepal, needing her help to locate the Ark of the Covenant with a possession originally obtained by her father, Dr. Abner Ravenwood. After 27 years of absence (21 years in the films' internal chronology), the character returned in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), portrayed by Allen, and the video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024), voiced by Allen.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a 2023 American action-adventure film directed by James Mangold and written by Mangold, David Koepp, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. It is the fifth and final installment in the Indiana Jones film series and the sequel to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Harrison Ford, John Rhys-Davies, and Karen Allen reprise their roles from the previous films, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore, and Mads Mikkelsen joining the cast. Set in 1969, the film follows Jones and his estranged goddaughter, Helena, who are trying to locate a powerful artifact before Dr. Jürgen Voller, a Nazi-turned-NASA scientist, who plans to use it to alter the outcome of World War II.

Dial of Destiny is the only film in the series not directed by Steven Spielberg nor conceived by George Lucas, though both served as executive producers. Plans for a fifth Indiana Jones film date back to the late 1970s, when a deal was made with Paramount Pictures to produce four sequels to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Lucas began researching potential plot devices for a fifth film in 2008, and Koepp was hired to write the screenplay in 2016. In 2018, Jonathan Kasdan replaced Koepp but later left the project. Originally set for release in 2019, the film faced delays due to rewrites and the COVID-19 pandemic. Spielberg was initially set to direct but stepped down in 2020, with Mangold taking over. Filming began in June 2021 in various locations including the United Kingdom, Italy, and Morocco, wrapping in February 2022.