For the June issue’s cover story on Star Wars, Vanity Fair’s Bruce Handy spoke at length with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy about things that take place in a galaxy far, far away. But in between filling our hearts with a new hope, Kennedy paused to throw a bone to the fans of another Harrison Ford vehicle: Indiana Jones.

While the further adventures of everyone’s favorite fedora-sporting professor have been anticipated ever since Disney and Paramount brokered a financial deal for “future films” back in 2012, this is the first official confirmation from Kennedy and the House of Mouse. Handy writes of the 2012 deal between Disney and Lucasfilm:

In buying the company, Disney also got rights, for better or worse, to less-storied Lucasfilm properties, among them Willow and Radioland Murders. A bigger prize is the Indiana Jones franchise. Kennedy confirmed rumors that another Indy movie “will one day be made inside this company. When it will happen, I’m not quite sure. We haven’t started working on a script yet, but we are talking about it.”

Kennedy’s statement is a much more optimistic and concrete version of what Disney chairman Alan Horn said last year. “We haven’t done anything,” he told Variety. “We don’t have a story. We need a story.” While there’s still no word on which rumored hunk might wear the fedora next, Kennedy and everyone else working at the higher level is clear about one thing: first, the movie needs a script. And who better to find that script than Kennedy, who served as Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg’s trusted executive producer on all of his projects from 1982-2012? Once Kennedy has all cylinders firing in space, she can turn her attention from the sands of Jakku to the dust of Indy's next dig.

If anyone knows what Disney is planning to do with the Indiana Jones rights gained by the Mouse House in the same deal that nabbed them Star Wars back in 2012, it’d be Frank Marshall. He’s worked as a producer or executive producer of every Indy movie to date, and is slated to return for the next one.

Looking for some clarity on rumours that have circulated for months, then, Total Film asked Marshall directly if Chris Pratt (who worked with Marshall on Jurassic World) could take up the mantle of Indiana Jones for the new film.

“There are a lot of rumours,” Marshall admitted. “We haven’t even sat down to talk about Indy yet… at some point we’ll sit down. But there’s a bunch of people who could probably take the baton.”

That sounds like he’s open to recasting Indy doesn’t it? Well, think again. Marshall also mentioned that they’re “not doing the Bond thing where we’re going to call somebody else Indiana Jones… we have to figure this out.”

Well, that’s a bit of a relief. So, Marshall is seemingly open to handing ‘the baton’ of the franchise to a younger actor but not willing to ‘call somebody else Indiana Jones.’

This surely means that we’ll eventually see Harrison Ford’s Indy imparting his archaeological expertise to a young aspiring adventurer. More like the new Star Wars sequels than James Bond, then. To draw a parallel with the two JJ Abrams Star Trek films, perhaps Harrison Ford could play a similar role to Leonard Nimoy - sticking around to give advice, but leaving the running about and heavy lifting to the new generation.

At this stage, we can’t rule any actors out. Except maybe Shia LaBeouf. More news as we hear it.

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