'Indy 4' Still Photographer Robbed Of Thousands of Photos; Dancing Russian Has an Alibi

If you've never been on a movie set, they always hire a guy to stand around and snap endless amounts of still photos while the filming goes on. Those pics are then sorted through later, for publicity purposes. Well, it's now been confirmed that the still photographer on the Indy 4 set was totally robbed of 2,500 photos from the production and the thieves are still at large* with the loot. A publicist for Paramount confirmed to Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere that the thievery took place, but contradicted an earlier rumor that there had been an actual break-in at the offices of Paramount Pictures. Apparently, the thieves took the photographer's hard-drive somewhere away from the set, and Paramount is claiming that they know the culprits have contacted online outlets trying to sell the photos. For their part, they've called in the FBI.

How hard could it possibly be to track down the thieves? I wasn't contacted by these guys, but anyone who was can and should give them up to the feds. I'm not going to name any names, but not long ago a certain outlet was specifically boasting of having seen "pictures" of Cate Blanchett in her Soviet villain garb, with black hair, boots and a sword tucked into her belt. This outlet didn't dare post those photos, choosing instead to just describe them and credit them to an anonymous person snapping pictures on set. And now Jeff Wells is confirming that the stolen haul of photos includes snaps of "Cate Blanchett in full villain mode." Hmmm ... I don't think the FBI will need to send in Mulder and Scully to get to the bottom of this one.

*See, I told you -- they caught the guy, according to IESB, before this story could even be published. The FBI put together a quick sting operation between some unnamed online journalist and the thief, and pounced on the guy at a seedy hotel in L.A. Apparently the theft was more extensive than originally thought -- the film's script was also possibly up for sale, it seems.