Despite a few outliers, either the box office still hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic strength to any great deal of consistency, or audiences are simply losing interest in heading to the theater to check out the latest installment in a long-running franchise. If it’s the latter, then Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny could be in some trouble.
We’re only a few weeks out from the release of Harrison Ford’s fifth and final whip-cracking adventure, and surprisingly tepid reviews have taken a great deal of shine off the buzz. Even now, Dial of Destiny is only packing a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 50 percent, and it’ll need to make a lot of money to turn a profit given the estimated budget of $300 million and change.
However, the latest projections only have James Mangold’s blockbuster debuting somewhere in the $60-70 million range, which put it on a par with Black Adam – which ended up faring so dismally Dwayne Johnson was exiled from the DCU in near-record time. Even more worryingly, the comic book adaptation was roughly $100 million cheaper to make.
Not only that, but even if Dial of Destiny does exceed the top end of expectations, it would still be very likely to fall short of the $84 million hauled in by Solo across its first three days, which ended up bombing so hard it ended Lucasfilm’s Star Wars anthology experiment altogether.
Even the derided Kingdom of the Crystal Skull notched $100 million 15 years ago, and when you adjust for inflation, Dial of Destiny is going to fall very very short.
