Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I have to admit I was a little skeptical when I fired up my RSS reader this morning and started seeing that Shia LeBouf had dropped “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” as the title for the forthcoming fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. It sounded like LeBouf had used the name of something being bounced around as an off-the-cuff mention at the MTV Video Music Awards last night. I actually said to myself, “Well I’m not blogging anything on this until I see the press release, no matter how many other movie sites write it up.” This seemed sensible since I’m not a big fan of reporting “news” that is just getting passed around but is really nothing more than rumor. CGI Justice League, anyone?

Then I saw the press release. So that’s that.

So thoughts? I love it. Sounds very much like an Indiana Jones story. But from a marketing point of view this is going to be a tough one. It’s a long title, one that’s going to take up a lot of poster space and will be hard to fit easily on toy packaging. If there were still such a thing as movie theater marquees it would get chopped to hell. But it’s a good title. Now it’s up to the filmmakers and Paramount to build a brand around that title and build anticipation (more than already exists, that is) for the movie and its Memorial Day 2008 premiere.

Now as to the means by which this title was made public, I can only imagine that LeBouf has been fitted with an electronic collar that fires 5,000 watts any time he begins a sentence with “Indiana…” not because they’re afraid of future leaks but just as an object lesson in letting marketing plans play out as planned. The wording of the release backs that up, essentially throwing him under the publicity bus in the first paragraph:

The title of the new Indiana Jones adventure, now in production under the direction of Steven Spielberg, is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it was revealed today by actor Shia LaBeouf.

In non-PR speak this translates roughly to “The little shit was running his mouth off, unlike the industry professionals Spielberg, Ford and others who would have waited until we were ready.” Trust me – someone in the Paramount publicity department actually wrote something very close to that as a first draft.