RichardApparently Benoît Peeters has a theory…Hmm… sounds a little pat. Putting it that way, Spielberg did
Raiders to “get back†at Hergé for not letting him do
Tintin and the Lost City of Ivory, the script for which apparently contained the rolling boulder scene then used at the start of the first Indiana Jones. (Update: My apologies - now known to be not at all the right order: see
here for a better timeline! - jock123)
I think the movie industry is full of these chains of events - George Lucas couldn’t get the rights to make
Flash Gordon because Dino de Laurentis had them, but he didn’t make
Star Wars to get at anyone, he just wanted to make an old style sci-fi serial style picture, and the rest is history.
It also has to be said that Spielberg did
Raiders at a time when his name was mud with the studios for the flop which was
1941; if that was when he wanted to do James Bond, then it is far more likely that MGM/UA nixed it because he was thought to be unable to keep within budget. It was only when George Lucas offered him the job of directing the first Indy movie that he managed to get his career back on track. So he wasn’t getting back at anyone then - he was just keen to work on anything that would prove himself again.
Spielberg’s wrestling the rights to Tintin from Moulinsart have extended from long before Harry Potter was around, and if they come to fruition will hardly be a competitor to the Potter juggernaut which will be mostly over in terms of the books, and a good way through the movie series. So I think it’s a neat theory, M. Peeters, but wrong…