Indiana Joan: Spielberg Open To Female-Led 'Indiana Jones'

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

LOS ANGELES (CNET) – Director Steven Spielberg has no problem with adventurer Indiana Jones someday being played by a woman, and he even has a name picked out.

"We'd have to change the name from Jones to Joan," he told Britain's Sun newspaper this week. "And there would be nothing wrong with that."

Filming for the fifth movie in the series will begin next April, and after that, legendary star Harrison Ford, 75, will lay down his whip and famous fedora. The character was introduced in Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1991, and Spielberg has directed all four previous movies.

"This will be Harrison Ford's last Indiana Jones movie, I am pretty sure," Spielberg said. "But (the saga) will certainly continue after that."

And Indiana Joan wouldn't have to worry about being paid less than a man, which caused a much-publicized scandal on Netflix's The Crown.

On Spielberg's just-released film Ready Player One, "everyone was equally paid," he said. "And on "The Post," Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep got the same paycheck exactly, right down to the perks."

The fifth Indiana Jones film is expected to premiere in 2020.