Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny? More like Indiana Jones and the Box Office of Doom. Numerous entertainment outlets are reporting that the new movie with Harrison Ford, who celebrates his 81st birthday this month but couldn’t turn down playing one of his most popular characters for one last time, only managed to make $60 million at the domestic box office when it opened this weekend. That’s bad news for Disney and Lucasfilm, which reportedly spent over $300 million to make the movie.
Yesterday, I learned from a key source that Indiana Jones and the Dial Destiny, before $100M in estimated P&A, cost a mindboggling $300M-plus. Much higher than the $250M-$295M that’s been leaked out there. Disney doesn’t comment on budgets, and I’m getting some pushback. But the high price tag here is due to the start and stops of production during Covid, Harrison Ford’s $20M fee, which I’m told director James Mangold got a pretty penny, with Steven Spielberg reaping as is standard a huge producing fee. That said, it stands to reason Disney would invest greatly here to revive a franchise; they spent $259M on Force Awakens. The point is for what the studio spent — they’re not getting anywhere near Star Wars box office results.