Indiana Jones: History and Key Facts

Indiana Jones is an American media franchise owned by Lucasfilm consisting of five films and a prequel television series, along with games, comics, and tie-in novels. The franchise centers on the adventures of Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., a fictional professor of archaeology. Jones is portrayed by Harrison Ford in all five of the films.

The film series was created by George Lucas and began in 1981 with Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was followed in 1984 by a prequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A sequel, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, was released in 1989, followed by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008. A fifth film, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, was released in 2023. The first four films were directed by Steven Spielberg, who worked closely with Lucas during their production. The fifth film was directed by James Mangold. In 1992, the franchise expanded to a television series with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which depicts Jones in his youth.

Marvel Comics began publishing the comic series The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones in 1983. Dark Horse Comics gained the comic book rights to the character in 1991. In addition to novelizations of the films, many novels with original stories have been published, including a series of German-language novels by Wolfgang Hohlbein; twelve novels published by Bantam Books which are set before the films; and a series of books set during Jones's childhood, which were inspired by the television series. Numerous Indiana Jones video games have been released since 1982.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Indiana Jones by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.