In the long history of Hollywood “what ifs,” few unrealized projects are as legendary — or as delightfully unhinged — as the 115-page screenplay written by Chris Columbus for what was once intended to be Indiana Jones 3. Years before audiences followed Indiana Jones on a quest for the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the fedora-wearing archaeologist was nearly sent down a far stranger path involving ghosts, gorillas, and immortality.
Written in 1985, Columbus’s script — commonly referred to as Indiana Jones and the Monkey King — imagined Harrison Ford’s iconic hero on a globe-spanning adventure that leaned heavily into fantasy. Though initially supported by George Lucas, the draft was ultimately rejected by Steven Spielberg, who famously felt it was “too unrealistic” for the franchise.
A Horror-Fueled Beginning in Scotland
Instead of opening with youthful nostalgia, the script began in 1937 Scotland, where Indy encounters the murderous ghost of Baron Seamus Seagrove III. This gothic prologue firmly established that supernatural entities — not just mythical artifacts — were real in the Indiana Jones universe. Spielberg, fresh off producing Poltergeist, felt ghosts crossed a tonal line the series should not.
Interestingly, remnants of this idea survived. The eerie atmosphere of Castle Brunwald in The Last Crusade echoes this abandoned haunted-castle concept.
Africa, Immortality, and a Cybernetic Nazi
The main story transported Indy to Africa, where he searched for the Garden of Immortal Peaches and the Fountain of Youth, guarded by Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King. Alongside zoologist Dr. Clare Clarke, Indy faced one of the franchise’s strangest villains: Nazi Sergeant Helmut Gutterbuhg, a man equipped with a mechanical arm that doubled as a machine gun.
The action escalated rapidly. Indy rode a rhinoceros into battle, escaped a massive Nazi “Super-Tank,” and confronted an army of gorillas who ultimately turned against the Nazis, commandeering weapons and vehicles in a climactic showdown.
A Death — and Resurrection
In perhaps the boldest departure from franchise tradition, the script actually killed Indiana Jones during the finale. He was resurrected moments later by the Monkey King in the Garden of Immortality — a narrative swing that definitively pushed the series into high fantasy.
Why It Was Abandoned
Despite Lucas’s enthusiasm, Spielberg felt the script drifted too far from the grounded pulp-adventure tone established in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Concerns over cultural depictions and escalating fantasy sealed its fate. Spielberg instead proposed a more personal story centered on a father-son relationship — a suggestion that led to Sean Connery joining the franchise and the Grail-based story audiences know today.
Though shelved, the Monkey King script remains a fascinating relic — a reminder that Indiana Jones once stood on the brink of battling ghosts and gorillas instead of searching for eternal faith.