‘Indiana Jones & The Dial Of Destiny’ Director Talks De-Aging Harrison Ford

The film directed by James Mangold takes place in 1969 but the opening sequence will take audiences back to 1944. Ford is now an 80-year-old actor (79 when he shot the film) and Mangold had to take advantage of the advancements in technology to de-age his leading man.

“I just shot him, and he just pretended that he was 35,” Mangold said calling Ford an “incredibly gifted and agile” actor. “But the technology involved is a whole other thing.”

Mangold continued, “We had hundreds of hours of footage of him in close-ups, in mediums, in wides, in every kind of lighting, night and day. I could shoot Harrison on a Monday as, you know, a 79-year-old playing a 35- year-old, and I could see dailies by Wednesday with his head already replaced.”

With the technological advancements, Mangold noted that “it wasn’t a year of effort to get to a first pass” on what Ford would look like de-aged.

“It was an incredible technology, and, in many ways, I just didn’t think about it. I just focused on shooting what’s [approximately] a 25-minute opening extravaganza that was my chance to just let it rip,” he added. “The goal was to give the audience a full-bodied taste of what they missed so much. Because then when the movie lands in 1969, they’re going to have to make an adjustment to what it is now, which is different from what it was.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny hits theaters on June 30, 2023, and it also stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, Boyd Holbrook, Thomas Kretschmann, Toby Jones, Antonio Banderas and John Rhys-Davies.