Not even the swansong for one of the most legendary, iconic, beloved, and enduringly popular characters cinema has ever seen has been enough to prevent Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny from under-performing at the box office, with the sequel’s poor performance the latest piece of evidence making it clearer than ever that nostalgia isn’t always a guaranteed win.
Armed with a budget of at least $295 million – although estimates claim it could be even higher than that – Harrison Ford’s final stand as the whip-cracking archeologist is on course to lose hundreds of millions of dollars for Disney and Lucasfilm by the time the dust settles, with the fifth chapter in the legendary franchise having only just cracked $300 million at the global box office.
Per analyst Luiz Fernando, Dial of Destiny is poised to end its global run with a running total somewhere in the $370-385 million range, which is bad enough. However, it gets even worse when you compare it to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which released 34 years ago and still managed to bring in $474 million by the time it left multiplexes; and that’s unadjusted for inflation.
The discrepancy in ticket sales is nothing short of eye-opening, especially when you consider that the average price of a cinema stub in the United States when the trilogy-capper released was $3.99. There’s been a very good argument to be made since 1989 that The Last Crusade should have been the end of the Indiana Jones IP when the title hero quite literally rode off into the sunset, and the hatred for Crystal Skull coupled with the disastrous bombing of Dial of Destiny only strengthens it.
