The Hollywood Reporter said on Friday that Cate Blanchett has signed on to star in Indiana Jones IV, but her publicist seemed to cast some doubt on this when she told the Associated Press yesterday that Blanchett is only “in negotiations”.
At any rate, the question everyone is asking now is: What role would she play? Most people, it seems, have assumed that she will play the love interest, but — given all those rumours about Shia LaBeouf playing Indy’s son, rumours that LaBeouf himself has disputed — I cannot help but wonder if she might play Indy’s daughter, instead.
Then again, she might be a tad old for that. My colleague Steven D. Greydanus notes that Blanchett, who turns 38 in May, is easily older than Indy’s previous leading ladies: Karen Allen turned 29 around the time Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) wrapped, Kate Capshaw was 29 all through Temple of Doom (1984), and Alison Doody was 21 when they shot Last Crusade (1989). And if the new film takes place 20 to 30 years after Raiders, then that wouldn’t leave much time for a daughter Blanchett’s age to be born.
Of course, Blanchett is 27 years younger than Harrison Ford, who turns 65 in July, so she might be the wrong age to play his lover, too. But age gaps of this sort would not be entirely unprecedented for Indiana Jones. Ford was 38 for most of Raiders, and was thus 9 years older than Allen — a fact that Allen’s character implicitly acknowledges when she says of her earlier fling with Indy, “I was a child! I was in love!” And by Last Crusade, Ford was 46, and thus 25 years older than Doody — whose character, of course, also slept with Indiana’s father, who was played by Sean Connery, who was then 58. (Yes, Indy’s dad is only 12 years older than him.)
Anyway, if Blanchett does play Indiana Jones’s love interest, I cannot help but wonder if she’ll be the mother of that daughter he had in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-1994).
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere speculates that Gong Li might also end up with a role in this film.
UPDATE: Oh, and regarding my choice of picture above, perhaps Blanchett could join this charming gallery of characters:
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