Hollywood magazine Variety is reporting that Steven Spielberg will not direct the upcoming Indiana Jones movie and will hand over duties to James Mangold.

Steven Spielberg has to date directed all the Indiana Jones films, and its always been thought he would always directed the movies, especially as his friend George Lucas has written the movies especially for the fames director to make.

The big question is has James Mangold been hand picked by Spielberg? His directing duties to date are 2019's Ford V. Ferrari (Le Mans '66 in the UK) which was nominated for a number of awards and he was the executive producer on The Greatest Showman.

With this in mind the big question is should be have a new Indiana Jones movie? The last film in the franchise is considered the worst, and without the Spielberg/Lucas/Ford magic can it ever live up to the franchises best moments?

Or maybe its time to hand over to a new director and get some new life in the flagging series, although Harrison Ford will certainly play Indiana Jones despite the fact he is pushing 80.

Time will tell and the release date for the movie is currently set for sometime in mid 2021.

Steven Spielberg Won’t Direct ‘Indiana Jones 5,’ James Mangold in Talks to Replace (EXCLUSIVE) https://t.co/hS2h64Qyji

— Variety (@Variety) February 26, 2020

It has been announced that the Star Trek/Mission: Impossible 4 director J.J. Abrams is going to be directing the upcoming Star Wars sequel.

Ever since Disney bought Lucasfilms, and the Star Wars franchise in the process, announcing that there would be an episodes 7, 8 and 9 of the long running saga, the main question has been, who will direct?

Abrams name has been one of the front runners, either is fans hoping for a decent director or in leaked information, but is not suprise, and of great relief that he will be at the helm.

Also confirmed is that the production (or leadership duties as the starwars.com website calls it) will be Kathleen Kennedy and the screen play will be done by Michael Arndt, who is also a life long Star Wars fan.

Good news all round really? In a word yes, Abrams has the ability to turn things around, and is a brilliant director. The transformation he has done with Star Trek is nothing short of amazing, he taken the pure essence of the franchise, turned it full circle on it's head and allowed it to live a new life BUT he has kept it pure to the original. Also he took the flagging franchise of Mission:Impossible and produced possibly the best film of the series.

I think largely fan concerns that Disney would turn the series into a money spinning load on nonsense has been largely laid to rest, and quite possible the series will be given a new lease of life after the prequel trilogy tried to kill it.

It's an old trick used by the film distribution companies to keep a steady flow of cash coming in by re-releasing old films, and each time in a different way, whether it be in the VHS days of suddenly discovering some new footage and releasing longer or directors cuts, or the more modern way of an improved picture and more extras. When a new format come along, like Blu-ray it give a whole new life to old films, just askGeorge Lucas, he's made a mint from the idea.

Studios are now suggesting that with some of the older films it isn't financially viable to re-release them again on Blue-ray, as Bill Hunt from The Digital Bits website writes in his daily “My Two Cents” column on his site.

It seems that the public these days expecting so much from High Definition that the amount of time and money spent on the disk production doesn't justify the return resulting in many a catalogue title maybe never seeing a release in high definition.

I think many of us are in this situation, you bought the VHS version of your favourite film say, The Breakfast Club. That version cant be played with your current hardware (who has a VHS player anymore?) so you bought the DVD version and enjoy it over and over again, the pictures as crisp today as the day it was bought. You now decide to buy an HDTV and Blu-ray player and find the Blu-ray version of the film, but is it really worth another purchase when your current disk will still play in your new player, and maybe even improve it?

It's an old argument, and when it comes to big Hollywood blockbuster a really good HD remastered transfer will make a huge difference, and I as much as anyone else will be lining the pockets of Lucasfilms when the virtually announced Star Wars Blu-ray films are released, but relatively speaking the list of film I need in HD is probably quite small, although my Blu-ray collection is growing at an alarming rate.

It's been announced that after 22 years a sequel to the 1987 smash hit film Wall Street is to be made, is this good news, a sequel to a landmark film? It may be a case of dragging up the old and trying to breath new life into them like many of the atrocious remakes of '80's horror films that seems to be the fashion at the moment, but the good news here is that not only is Michael Douglas back as the money obsessed ruthless Gordon Gekko but Oliver Stone is back to write ad direct.

What will be interesting, and with Stone behind the script it's highly likely, will be the contrasts the new film will have with it's predecessor, the '80's was an age of richness and greed and when ruthless men on Wall Street didn't take lunch because they were too busy making money.

The naughties (2000 - 2009) have been an age when Wall Street in particular has been struck by tragedy that has changed peoples attitudes and the world is in the midst of a recession that in particular has his the financial industry, what a difference 20 years makes.

Douglas of course won the Oscar for his his lead in the original, if they can pull off a similar fate to that of The Color of Money for Paul Newman he may just do it again, lets just hope the title is not Wall Street 2!