Disney’s movies are growing increasingly woke and increasingly unwatched, with the insertion of far-left themes and characters leading to audiences finding something else to watch if they go to a movie. Such was the case with the latest woke Disney flop, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
That movie, which struggled to compete with Sound of Freedom when it came out, with Sound of Freedom doing strongly as the weeks wore on and Dial of Destiny doing poorly on opening weekend and then falling off a cliff in the following weekends.
Well, that didn’t particularly improve and now the woke flick is set to lose $100 million. Such is what a report in even the far-left Variety admitted. In the article, titled “Big Budgets, Big Headaches: Why ‘Indiana Jones 5’ and ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ are Struggling to Make a Profit.”
In the article, Variety noted that the latest attempt at an Indiana Jones-based cash grab was a big swing in a miss, only managing to generate $375 million globally after six weeks of release. That compares to the latest Mission Impossible movie, which debuted later, in July rather than late June, and generated $523 million with five weeks of release.
Variety then notes that as the latest Indy sequel cost about $300 million to produce before marketing, which was at least $100 million but likely far more, making it both incredibly expensive and nowhere near bringing in enough money to break even, much less reach a profit, once the marketing and also distribution costs are factored in.
Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice Pro, noted that the Covid pandemic added to the cost of the movies, saying, “These movies would have been a lot more economical if it weren’t for COVID. But even if that meant their budgets were inflated, at the end of the day, these movies cost what they cost and performed how they performed.”
And that performance is brutal. $375 million is nowhere near enough for a film that cost between $400 and $430 million to produce, as it didn’t even earn back its sky-high costs. Then came in the theater situation: theaters screening the film ate up at least $150 million of the poor revenue. So, depending on what costs are factored in and how badly things turn out, Disney’s loss was at least $100 million, but was likelier $225 million or $200 million loss for Disney.
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And it gets worse, as some costs and details aren’t yet known. One of the major ones is how much Harrison Ford gets to take out the gross sales, which could be substantial and further increase Disney’s brutal losses on the woke movie.
Potentially, the film could make back some of its losses with streaming. Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations, said, “There’s an opportunity to make money back with streaming and other sales, but that’s long into the future. It’s playing the long game instead of the short game. They don’t want to be profitable in 25 years.”