Indiana Jones And The Flop Of The Decade

The box office numbers for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny are in, and the opening weekend is the expected disaster. Indiana Jones earned just 60 million USD at the domestic box office. And overseas markets added another $70 million. Now the numbers are still preliminary, the final numbers could be off by +/- 1 or 2 million. Tracking numbers released yesterday said the movie would earn just $58.5 million domestic. Either way, this is the lowest end of the early box office projections.

So what does that mean for Disney and Lucasfilm? Will it mean anything? Head over to Chuck’s article if you want to discuss the movie itself. Here I want to focus on its financial performance and especially if the movie should lead to any personnel changes at Lucasfilm. This is not about whether the movie is good or bad, this is purely about its expected massive financial loss and what results that could have. So click through for a discussion!

Indiana Jones and the Bottle of Booze

The basics first… the official budget for Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny is $300 million. For movies of this caliber you have to add at least $100 million marketing costs, maybe even $150 million. So we are looking at total costs of $400-$450 million at least.

Which means the movie needs to make $800-$900 million to break even, as the studios will get roughly half of the worldwide box office. TV rights that usually added a lot of money barely exist anymore, because Disney will offer the movie almost everywhere in the world on Disney+. And Disney+ is a sinkhole. Home media sales have only known one trend in recent years… down into the abyss, as digital and streaming destroy that market. So Blu-Rays or DVDs won’t add all that much money either. It’s also very unlikely Hasbro will send hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties for sold Indy toys to Disney. So that means the box office will be the major source of revenue for the movie.

With a 3 day worldwide total of about $130 million the movie is looking at maybe a $300-$400 million total box office run. Unless it repeats the performance of The Flash which opened only slightly worse domestic and then crashed and burned like the Hindenburg. That movie is currently at about $220 million worldwide. I doubt Indy 5 will crash as hard and will have better legs than The Flash, but even then slightly less than $400 million is the best case scenario for the movie. An upper limit. And that means Disney will get about $200 million for that movie from theaters maximum, most likely less though. Given the ludicrous budget and very high marketing costs this means the movie will at least be $200 million in the red.

Also, the disastrous Cinemascore of B+ has sealed the fate of the movie as well, a Cinemascore of B+ is actually already pretty bad. Almost all the successful blockbusters have A-, some even A and there is a strong correlation between Cinemascores and box office success. And B+ means nothing good for the movie. Solo had a Cinemascore of A-. For reference.

This after Elemental flopped colossally at the box office. This $200 million animated movie currently has a worldwide box office of less than $200 million. Not even $100 million domestic. That movie may end up making $250 million maybe. If at all. Which is a loss of about $150-$175 million. Almost as bad as Indy 5.

Ok, now that we have established that Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny is most likely losing Disney hundreds of millions of dollars… what does it mean, more precisely, what should it mean?

So the question is: can Kathleen Kennedy survive this debacle? This is her movie, she wanted it, she made it, she set the overall direction and tone. And it turns out making an action adventure with an 80-year-old is nothing younger people want to see. Early analytics from showings on Friday prove what tracking numbers suggested before: people younger than 25 have very little interest in the movie. The audience is skewing older. And very, very male. And this is something Kathleen Kennedy should have known. So why the movie was greenlit and then given a budget of $300 million plus marketing is pretty surprising. There is no way this movie with this kind of budget could ever recoup its costs, when the most eager moviegoers, young people, have very little interest in it. Anyone could have told Kennedy (should have told Kennedy) that spending so much money on a movie with an 80-year-old action hero will not enjoy all that much success. Yet here we are… some $400+ million later.

So should there be consequences?

This is now Kathleen Kennedy’s second major movie flop as president of Lucasfilm. Solo flopped because it was a movie no one wanted and it went extremely over budget because Kennedy fired the directors when they had almost finished shooting the movie. Indiana Jones will flop because it’s again a movie few people really wanted and it also went over budget for various reasons. The movie had serious production delays and hiccups like so many of Kathleen Kennedy’s Lucasfilm movies, which all added to the cost.

And if we also include Willow here, then it’s actually her third major flop. Willow flopped even so hard it was wiped from existence by Disney when it was removed from Disney+.

And the thing is… all these flops are pretty recent, where we are now The Force Awakens, the one massive financial success, is a faint memory, that was eight years ago. But because of Kathleen Kennedy’s mismanagement of the sequels The Rise of Skywalker limped over the finish line and all movie plans were cancelled as a result of this. Disney basically conceded defeat and pretended it’s “fatigue”. It was not. It was “bad movie fatigue” maybe.

Under Kennedy’s stewardship Lucasfilm has killed Willow and now Indy is dead for good as well. Only recently Kennedy hinted at the possibility that there may be future adventures with a female Indy replacement (aka Phoebe Waller-Bridge)… I suppose it’s a safe bet to say this will not happen. Also, Waller-Bridge has recently signed a deal with Netflix, which tells you all you need to know about  her confidence there may be follow-up Indy projects with her. And Star Wars, while not dead, is not in top shape either. We will get a new movie in 2026 at the earliest. And it will be a Rey movie…

Now Disney, and whoever has some sense left on the board, should ask themselves how likely it is that a follow-up to the sequel trilogy with Rey will be a financial success. Or what the chances are this movie may flop as hard as Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny.

To me it’s evident that there needs to be a change of leadership and a complete reboot of Star Wars movies. If I were Disney I would release Filoni’s Mandoverse movie first. And I would cancel any and all other ongoing movie projects and go back to the drawing board. Of course this would only be possible if Kennedy is no longer president of Lucasfilm.

2023 will be a disaster for Disney. Their string of massive box office flops – and even a decent $500+ million worldwide box office for The Little Mermaid makes this a flop, since the movie needed $750-800 million just to break even – is impressive in all the wrong ways. And chances are The Haunted Mansion (a $160 million remake of a movie that flopped in the early 2000s despite Eddie Murphy as the lead, so whoever had the bright idea to remake this flop should probably look for other job opportunities soon) and The Marvels will flop as well.

So can they really afford to make a Rey movie? Can they afford to let Kathleen Kennedy keep running things into the ground at Lucasfilm? Lucasfilm is once again a one trick pony now. Only Star Wars is left. Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny’s massive box office failure will put this franchise into the grave for good. Willow doesn’t even have a grave, it has been snapped out of existence Thanos style. So does Disney REALLY want to have a Rey movie in 2026? Based on a movie trilogy many people do not like all that much? And wish we would never hear from again?

And what about James Mangold’s project? According to Kennedy the Rey movie and Mangold’s movie are thematically connected. But if he is as lucky with that movie as he is with Indy 5 – not at all – it’s yet another gamble.

So in my opinion Lucasfilm needs a purge. Kennedy must go, cancel all movie projects other than Filoni’s movie. Go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a Star Wars for the 21st century that does not rely on nostalgia or prior knowledge and has zero ties to the sequels and no obvious ties to the Lucas movies.

And Bob Iger can retire himself along with Kathy in the process… Disney needs to rethink their basic philosophy. Do they want to be an entertainment company, meant to bring people fun and diversion… or do they want to be a political party that gets involved in fights with US politicians about politics? You don’t hear any of these things from studios like Universal or Warner. And Universal is taking away all the cake from Disney with its movies in recent times. Their $100 million Super Mario movie sits at 1.3 billion USD worldwide box office. Something Indiana Jones, The Little Mermaid and Elemental will not even make combined. And those movies cost a total of $750 million PLUS marketing. So all in all about $1.1 billion including marketing. How does that sound?

So what do you think? Will the box office failure of Indiana Jones have consequences? And if… what consequences should it have? Or will we all get to see how a Rey movie produced by Kathleen Kennedy in 2026 will implode like that Titan submersible? Or could it be a hit after all?

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