The price tag for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” has been, countless times, reported to be $290 million. I’d like to believe Deadline’s Anthony D'Alessandro who says it was actually $329 million.
‘Dial of Destiny’ ended up grossing a disappointing $384 million worldwide. The prior ‘Indy,’ ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,’ earned more than $790 million globally. The franchise has officially hit a dead end.
A Forbes report is now saying that Disney lost $134 million on ‘Dial of Destiny.’ Although not reaching the nadir heights of “Lone Ranger” and “John Carter,” which both had estimated losses of over $200 million, ‘Dial of Destiny’ should still qualify as a major failure for Disney.
It was a mistake to premiere ‘Dial of Destiny’ at Cannes, where it garnered mixed reviews. The post-Cannes reviews were slightly more favorable — 70% on Rotten Tomatoes — but not enough to save it from box-office infamy.
It’s quite possible that moviegoers were so turned off by 2008’s ‘Kingdom of Crystal Skull’ that they decided to tune out ‘Dial of Destiny’ by the time it rolled around in theaters. I know, a real shocker, audiences were not willing to pay their hard-earned money to watch an 81-year-old Harrison Ford in an action movie.
It's not that ‘Dial of Destiny’ was a bad film. Its first half was decent, and that opening sequence on top of the train was memorably realized, but the second half was weak and the ending was baffling. A rumored reboot with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character now seems very unlikely.
With that said, I bet Disney’s “The Marvels,” which had a similar budget to ‘Dial of Destiny,’ but only grossed half as much, reaped far greater losses, possibly in the ‘John Carter’ Range ($200+ million). We’ll eventually get the official numbers.