According to a report in Forbes based on financial statements that the outlet obtained, Disney managed to lose a whopping $134.2 million on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, its latest entry in the Indiana Jones film franchise. Though the original “Indy” movies were loved by audiences, this latest one struggled to take off, with many finding the plot dull and full of woke comments and themes.
That lack of audience interest, one that meant the small-budget “Sound of Freedom” competed with the big budge Disney blockbuster attempt, meant that the film flopped and remained deeply in the red, unable to overcome its sky-high production costs, particularly after the theaters took their cut of the relatively small ticket sales.
According to Forbes, the film’s budget, even before promotion costs are included, swelled to a massive $387.2 million. That was a problem for Disney, as the movie only made $384 million in global ticket sales. The movie theaters selling the tickets typically end up taking about a 50 percent cut, meaning that the studio receives about 50 percent as well. Here, that means Disney probably earned about $192 million, putting it deep in the red before promotion costs.
After adding in the promotion costs for the movie and netting out the tax incentives Disney received while making it, Forbes estimates that the movie likely cost Disney something in the range of $134.2 million. Though that could creep into the black as people stream it in the future, and ancillary goods sold, such as clothing and toys, could help out, that’s still a big loss for Disney, for now, at least.
Further, the movie’s performance was poor event compared to the previous Indy entry that audiences claimed, at the time, to dislike. Without accounting for the past decade and a half of inflation, the fourth Indiana Jones movie, 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, made $787 million in global ticket sales, about $400 more than Dial of Destiny.
Even without accounting for decades of inflation, Dial of Destiny compared poorly to the original three Indiana Jones movies. Without accounting for all the inflation in the decades since they came out, in 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark grossed $367 million in global ticket sales, 1984’s Temple of Doom made $333 million, and Last Crusade made a whopping $474 million, beating the nominal sales of Dial of Destiny.
When accounting for inflation, the sales figures are even more shocking, and bad for Disney. After accounting for the decades of inflation, Raiders made $1.276 billion, Temple of Doom earned $994 million, Last Crusade made $1.186 billion, Crystal Skull managed to bring in $1.134 billion, and Dial of Destiny only made $384 million. So, all the others were roughly in line with each other, but Dial of Destiny got blown out of the water.
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Unfortunately for Disney and its investors, those deep-in-the-red flops are getting more common for the once-popular studio, as audiences get increasingly annoyed with the wokeness in the films and, after being let down by a slew of bad movies, less likely to head to movie theaters.