| abstract
| - Indiana Jones and the Sons of Darkness is a fan made script written in 1995 by Robert Marshall Smith without the endorsement of Lucasfilm. In 1996 Smith himself released the script to the internet, falsely crediting it to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade writer Jeffrey Boam and telling that it had been given to him by a dissatisfied courier. Lucasfilm started a persecution of the false script immediately, petitioning several webpages to delete it. This actually gave the script even more popularity and diffusion as many people though that if Lucasfilm was after it, it had to be real. In the end Lucasfilm and Smith reached an agreement by which Smith was allowed to release his script to the internet as many times as he wanted but only after he deleted all references to Jeffrey Boam, George Lucas, Lucasfilm and any character registered by this firm. As a result, in the current neutered version Indiana Jones is called Alabama Smith, Marion Ravenwood is Shanon Crowtree and Sallah is Mallah. However, copies of the old script still exist on the internet and continue to fool Indy fans that read it without knowing its origin. Rumours say that the existence of this fake script convinced Lucas to veto the idea of using Noah's Ark as the fourth movie's McGuffin. However, Noah's Ark had been already featured in a 1992 official Indiana Jones novel, Indiana Jones and the Genesis Deluge, and Jeb Stuart was writing at that time a script titled Indiana Jones and the Saucermen from Mars, which shared many of the elements that were finally seen in the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
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