It appears that it’s not just Americans that find the latest woke Disney flick, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” too terrible to watch, much less find enjoyable. Not so shockingly, the idea of seeing a former hero berated by his niece for two hours was unappealing to anyone except the wokest of feminists…who aren’t going to watch an Indiana Jones movie.
How bad was the release? Well, it brought in only $60 million domestically, a pitiful sum for a formerly beloved franchise opening on the Independence Day weekend, particularly given that it cost more than $400 million to make, distribute, and advertise.
Even worse was its international opening. The movie was woke enough to make it past the censors in communist China, so it opened there…and brought in an even more pitiful $2.3 million. Apparently, even the communists in Red China found the terribly woke film too terrible to watch.
And it’s not that the Chinese film market is particularly soft. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a mystery thriller released in the country brought in a “$116.8 million haul from Friday to Sunday” and has, over the 11 days since its release, “earned a whopping $319.6 million.”
The Chinese ticketing app Maoyan forecasts that film will earn more than $450 million, whereas it forecasts “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” finish with less than a hundredth of that, topping out at $3.8 million.
One reason for the extremely poor opening for the new Indy film in the Chinese market is that the Chinese have no connection to or nostalgia for the films. Whereas many Americans grew up watching the first three on VHS or DVD, or seeing them in theaters as they came out, and then got to see a fourth on the big screen that was reasonably good, even if not as good as the first three, the Chinese movie market never showed those.
So, with almost no one over there going to see the film for nostalgia’s sake, the Chinese market was left to judge the film on its merits. They obviously judged those merits poor, as nearly no one went to see it on opening weekend, making it the film with the largest budget to ever flop so terribly in China.
Further, though more people went to see it in Europe and Japan than in China, the worldwide performance was still lackluster. It has so far brought in only $130 million worldwide, which isn’t even half of its production cost, much less the costs after marketing and distribution are included. Further, that’s worst than the film’s $140 million expectation.
This comes hot on the heels of other dismal Disney movies: the past four have cost the company nearly a billion dollars in losses. This latest film’s release is sure to push that number higher, perhaps to over a billion dollars if its weakness both domestically and abroad continues as audiences tune out of woke, terrible films with plots that spit on the past rather than use it to build an interesting and exciting story.
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