Never in a million years would anyone have expected the swansong for one of cinema’s most iconic characters ever to bomb horrendously at the box office, but that’s the sad truth of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
After Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ended up as one of the most polarizing blockbusters ever made, hopes were high that listening to the backlash and placing Logan‘s James Mangold as a suitable directorial replacement for the legendary Steven Spielberg would propel the fifth and final installment to rude health at the box office. Instead, the opposite happened, and Dial of Destiny tanked hard.
Carrying a reported budget of $295 million plus additional marketing and distribution costs, Indiana Jones 5 barely cleared $380 million theatrically, with the most generous estimates placing Disney and Lucasfilm’s losses at around $100 million at the very least, although it could yet prove to be significantly higher.
On the plus side, the temporal adventure has managed to debut as the number one movie on streaming in 33 countries after being made available on digital and VOD per FlixPatrol, but there’s no chance Harrison Ford’s last stand will even come close to turning a profit. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, and a legend such as Indy deserved to go out in a blaze of glory, not as the focal point of his worst-reviewed outing ever and the sole flop among a quintet of certifiable commercial sensations.
Perhaps it was just bad luck, or maybe the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia aren’t quite as strong as they used to be.