When Paramount releases the fourth Indiana Jones installment on May 22, it will have been 19 years since Harrison Ford last donned Indy’s fedora—and 27 years since the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first in the series. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, estimated to cost $125 million and directed by Steven Spielberg, is expected to be one of the summer movie season’s blockbusters. The question for Paramount is whether an aging Indy (Ford turned 65 during filming) can pull in audiences the way the studio’s Transformers did in 2007. The bar is pretty high: On its opening weekend last July, Transformers earned $70.5 million, almost half its budget. It went on to make a total of $707 million at the box office worldwide. In comparison, the three previous Indy films combined have generated slightly more than $1.2 billion when adjusted for inflation.

The Indy Index

Vital and not-so-vital statistics on one of Paramount’s favorite franchises.

• Opening U.S. weekend gross for Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981: $8.3 million
• Average cost of a movie ticket in 1981: $2.78
• Amount Crystal Skull will have to gross in U.S. box office to beat an adjusted-for-inflation Raiders: $527 million
• Paramount’s ranking among studios when Brad Grey became chief in 2005: 7
• Paramount’s 2007 ranking: 1
• Number of movies in Paramount’s all-time top 10 (gross revenues adjusted for inflation) made under Brad Grey so far: 0
• Number of films in Paramount’s all-time top 10 (gross revenues adjusted for inflation) made under Michael Eisner, who greenlighted Raiders before moving
  to Disney: 4
• Number of actresses Kate Capshaw beat out to play Willie Scott (and be directed by Steven Spielberg, her future husband) in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: 120
• Rank of Steven Spielberg’s 1989 divorce from his first wife, Amy Irving, on the 2007 Forbes list of most expensive celebrity divorces:  3
• Rank of Harrison Ford’s divorce from his second wife, Melissa Mathison, on the
  same list: 4
• Amount Viacom paid in 1994 to prevent a hostile takeover of Paramount by former chairman Barry Diller’s QVC Network: $10 billion
• Total U.S. box office in 2007: $9.2 billion
• Paramount’s share of 2007 total U.S. box office: $1.5 billion
• Amount that producer George Lucas gave in 2006 to his alma mater, the University of Southern California’s film school: $175 million
• Number of all-time 100 top-grossing movies made by Steven Spielberg or
  George Lucas: 13
• Odds that Crystal Skull will make that list: ???