10 Movies That Spent Decades In Development Hell
4. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
After the virtually pitch-perfect conclusion of The Last Crusade, people really didn't need another Indiana Jones movie. But they sure as hell wanted one. For almost two decades Steven Spielberg and George Lucas fielded questions about a potential fourth installment and when they finally delivered in 2008, a vocal portion of fans f**king hated the thing. Be careful what you wish for, and all that.
Before David Koepp's script for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull went into production, Indy 4 was seemingly being rewritten on an annual basis. Jeb Stuart, Jeffrey Boam, M. Night Shyamalan, Frank Darabont and Jeff Nathanson all took a crack at it, with potential subtitles rumored to include Saucer Men from Mars, City of Gods, The Atomic Ants, The Mysterians, Son of Indiana Jones and Destroyer of Worlds. The fact that these titles had absolutely nothing to do with each other indicates just how much of a struggle the creative team had in cracking the story and finding the perfect MacGuffin.
None of these scripts must have been any good if Crystal Skull's hokey plot is the best anybody could come up with after nearly twenty years. Not quite the cinematic abomination that the internet still paints it to be, the long-in-development fourth adventure for cinema's favorite archeology professor does have its moments, but fails to recapture the glories of the original trilogy due to some shoddy CGI, Shia-swinging and fridge-nuking.