Harrison Ford will be back for one more Indiana Jones movie to be released in a couple of years. After that, it sounds like the franchise will continue on, but with another actor leading the show.

Ford first portrayed the character in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark before returning for 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After close to 20 years, he would once again return for 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The fifth installment would come over a decade after that.

Harrison Ford is 73 as of the time of this writing, and he will turn 74 next month. By the time the fifth Indiana Jones film is shot, he will be 76. Many people think the actor will simply be too old to play the iconic character that is as synonymous with the name Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg is not one of them.

Stephen Spielberg just dropped a major "Indiana Jones" spoiler https://t.co/UerWMYHV8W pic.twitter.com/SCy4CTj3vW — HuffPostEnt (@HuffPostEnt) June 17, 2016

Spielberg spoke with NY Daily News about the actor returning to the Indiana Jones franchise. He is quoted as saying:

“As Harrison matures so does his character and yet he did so many of his own stunts in The Force Awakens. He keeps himself in such brilliant physical shape that I don’t believe when 2018 comes around, which is when I’m slated to direct the fifth installment coming out in 2019, I think Harrison is going to be able do a lot of what the script is asking him to do. We’re not concerned about that at all.

The Hollywood Reporter posted an interview with Disney CEO Bob Iger who spoke about Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones among other things. “Right now, we’re focused on a reboot, or a continuum and then a reboot of some sort.,” he said.

“Well, we’ll bring him back, then we have to figure out what comes next. That’s what I mean. It’s not really a reboot, it’s a boot — a reboot. I don’t know. We [got] Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in the film. But then what’s the direction? I’ve had discussions about what the direction is, [but] I don’t want to get into it.”

Iger went on to say, “I don’t think it reaches the scale of the universe of Star Wars, but I see making more. It won’t be just a one-off.”

While it’s likely that Ford will only be back for one last Indiana Jones film (at least outside of a potential cameo), that doesn’t mean he’s going to die in the fifth installment. As Inquisitr recently covered, Spielberg dropped the spoiler that Jones will not be killed off at the end of the film. The filmmaker also thinks fans will like the film better than the last one.

Steven Spielberg promises he won't kill off Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 5 https://t.co/6Wm0y2OtZx pic.twitter.com/awsz32UTdi — Total Film (@totalfilm) June 20, 2016

Harrison Ford himself has been talking about returning to the Indiana Jones role. As TheInquisitr recently reported, the actor has a hard time escaping the theme music composed by John Williams.

Ford joked with WBT, “They play it every time I walk on stage, every time I walk off a stage. It was playing in the operating room when I went in for my colonoscopy.”

Even still, the actor reportedly prefers playing Indiana Jones to Han Solo, though he came back for that one last time with last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

With Harrison Ford back in the titular role, the fifth Indiana Jones film is said to take place after the events of the fourth film — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — which received mixed reviews at best, and is largely considered to be a blemish on the face of the franchise.

[Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images]