According to an interview with MTV News, Frank Darabont says his Indiana Jones script was approved by Steven Spielberg, but rejected by George Lucas.

     Darabont spends most of the interview with MTV talking about his upcoming, Stephen King novel-based film, “The Mist;” which opens this fall. In this portion of the interview he says he owns the rights to Stephen King’s “The Long Walk” and “The Monkey.” This is excellent news. “The Long Walk” is one of my favorite stories of all time. I’m sure the movie won’t live up to the book, but I’d still be there if the film ever gets made.

     Now on to the more interesting stuff of why it took so long for an “Indy” script to get approved and why filming hasn’t even started yet. Durabont says:

     ”Indy” is definitely in that category [of bad experiences], topping the list. It showed me how badly things can go. I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn’t like the script…

…I told [Lucas] he was crazy. I said, “You have a fantastic script. I think you’re insane, George.” You can say things like that to George, and he doesn’t even blink. He’s one of the most stubborn men I know.

     He’s then asked if any of his script made it into the upcoming film:

     I have no idea if there’s a shred of it left. It was a tremendous disappointment and a waste of a year… I would love [to share it with the world], but it’s not my material to disseminate. At this point, I don’t give much of a damn what George thinks, but I wouldn’t want to harm my friendship with Steven.

     Wow. It sounds like he’s pretty bitter with Lucas for turning down his script. I would be too. An entire year of writing just thrown down the toilet because GL has an ego problem. Sad.

You can read the entire interview over at MTV News if you care to.

Thanks to Scott O. for calling the MoviePatron tip line for this one.

UPDATE: So I was tooling around with some other sites that mention this rejected script had something to do with Indy investigating aliens and UFO’s in the 50’s. I tracked it back to an article at CHUD in which the writer mentions that the script is “supposedly about Indy invetigating UFOs in the 50s.” The article is an interview with Darabont, but nowhere in the interview does Darabont mention this. The writer just put this in the article. I’ve since emailed the author of the article but as of yet have not heard back as to where he got this from.