Nostalgia can be a powerful tool in moderation, but it doesn’t appear to be having any effect on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office, regardless of James Mangold’s fond farewell to the cinematic icon enjoying a brief resurgence after a disappointing opening weekend.
Unless Harrison Ford’s swansong shows some serious legs over the next few weeks – which is by no means guaranteed when Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer, and Barbie are all on the way – then analysts are already prognosticating a potential loss in the $200 million range.
That would be abysmal to put it lightly, but Dial of Destiny is concerningly – and somewhat eerily – mirroring the trajectory of another massively expensive rose-tinted legacy project that ended up being quietly swept under the rug.
Back in 2006, Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns came armed with a budget north of $200 million, was heavily indebted to the Richard Donner era, favored a defiantly old school approach to its filmmaking than the bells-and-whistles that had become more prevalent than ever, and ended up failing to reach $400 million globally before having a sequel scrapped in favor of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel reboot.
Both Dial of Destiny and Returns released over the July 4 weekend and landed a B+ CinemaScore, too, while the former has banked $82 million after five days in theaters compared to the latter’s $76 million, although they both enjoyed identical first Saturdays of $18.5 million.
Of course, Indiana Jones 5 has only been playing for a matter of days, so maybe it’s a little too early to completely write it off just yet.