Yahoo Sports The reasons Indiana Jones 5 has been a box-office flop
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was meant to be a glorious send-off for Harrison Ford's iconic character, but it hasn't exactly turned out that way.
Following a disappointing US box-office debut that came in below expectations, Indiana Jones 5 couldn't rebound in its second weekend and was overtaken by surprise chart-topper Insidious: The Red Door.
It's the latest blockbuster to disappoint at the box office and leaves Hollywood in need of Tom Cruise to save it again with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Equally, its saviour could come with Barbie and/or Oppenheimer, but wherever it comes, it won't be from a miraculous Indy recovery.
But why has Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny been a box-office flop? Let's investigate.
Before we get into the reasons why, here's where Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny stands at the end of its second weekend of release.
In the US, the movie dropped 56% from its opening weekend to add $26.5 million for $121.2 million to date. Including its overseas haul of $126.7 million, Indiana Jones 5 has grossed $247.9 million so far.
A sign of how poorly it's done so far is that it's still ranking as the lowest-grossing Indiana Jones movie of the series, even though the original trilogy was released in the 1980s and no adjustment for inflation has been taken into account.
By the end of its run, Indiana Jones 5 should have overtaken Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($333.1 million), but Raiders of the Lost Ark ($389.9 million) isn't guaranteed to be surpassed by the new movie. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ($474.2 million) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($790.7 million) are too far ahead.
If there's comfort to be had, it's that the new Indy movie will at least overtake fellow flop The Flash, currently at $261.6 million worldwide. Whatever happens in the coming weeks though, it will still remain a box-office failure.
Assuming Indiana Jones 5 ends up around $350 million to $400 million, it's a final result that some other 2023 blockbusters, like The Flash, would happily take. But a key part of why it's being viewed as such a flop is that it cost a lot of money.
The reported budget for the movie is around $300 million and, typically, a movie would need to make 2.5 times its budget before it starts hitting profit. That factors in a marketing spend that, for Indy 5, was reported by Deadline to be roughly $100 million. It means the movie would have to make at least $750 million before it would become profitable.
It's safe to say now that figure won't be hit and while the movie might rebound on home entertainment and streaming, it's certain to be a failure at the cinema. The same budgetary issue hit the likes of The Flash (estimated $200 million budget) and Fast X (estimated $340 million budget).
Put simply, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was just too expensive to make, and its appeal was greatly overestimated. But it's also possible that Disney's marketing strategy just didn't work out in that case either, kneecapping the movie before it even started its release.
More than a month before its cinema release, Indiana Jones 5 received a splashy world premiere at Cannes Film Festival. It worked for Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, hyping up the release, but for Indy 5, it did anything-but.
The movie debuted with the worst reviews of the series to date, even lower than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's rebounded in the month since and now stands at a respectable 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, but still ranks as the lowest-rated movie of the series.
Rather than hyping it up as a must-see blockbuster, these initial reactions likely heightened fan fears that we had another Crystal Skull on our hands (even though that movie has had a reappraisal in years since). When the more positive reviews did land, they still weren't exactly lauding it as a must-see.
Dedicated Indiana Jones fans wouldn't have been put off, but the wider audience that might go and see a new blockbuster would have been. Adding in the 'it'll be on Disney+ soon' belief, it's not really a surprise that the movie failed to uncover gold at the box office.
Significant blockbuster competition arrives this week with the new Mission: Impossible movie, before a much-talked about double bill of Barbie and Oppenheimer on July 21. Indiana Jones 5 needed to make hay when it was the only blockbuster in town, and it couldn't do that.
Even without the massive budget, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would have still been seen as a box-office disappointment given the numbers, yet it certainly heightens the feeling of failure.
Indy deserved a big send-off, but he'll end up getting buried among other notable high-profile 2023 flops.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is out now in cinemas.
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