Disney paid over $4 billion for Lucasfilm LTD in 2012, so it’s no wonder they want to capitalize on it. And while the Star Wars movies have made billions (hell, Grogu toys alone probably made billions), Disney has had less success reviving other Lucasfilm properties, having just deleted the Willow series after basically, no one watched it.
Now their latest attempt, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has also come up lacking with a $60 million three-day opening. There was some questioning as to whether it was even a good idea to bring back Harrison Ford in the iconic role, as opposed to recasting with a younger performer, but Disney already tried that with Solo and that didn’t succeed either. But it did better than this with a $84.4M opening in 2018. (Can you imagine if they brought back Alden Ehrenreich to play a young Indiana Jones?)
On the upside, since Tuesday is Independence Day in the U.S., it’s considered a five-day weekend, so over that span, Dial of Destiny made $82M.
Coming out of the Cannes Film Festival, Dial of Destiny was pretty much sunk as critical reception was poor, to put it mildly. As of right now, its Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score is 69%, the worst of any Indiana Jones installment and that includes Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which has a 77% score. Oddly, Dial of Destiny has a much higher Audience score at 88%, while Crystal Score has a fairly terrible 57% rating.
Exiting audiences were along the same lines as the RT audience, with Dial of Destiny earning a B+ CinemaScore. That’s not terrible, but probably not what Disney was banking on.
But speaking of underdogs, Elemental is actually defying expectations. It’s not raking in cash, but it’s holding up quite well, dropping only 34%. Earning $17.9M over five days, it landed at #2. It will very likely be a huge hit when it hits Disney+.
Dropping out of the Top Five in its third weekend altogether is DC’s flop The Flash. Yeah, there’s no salvaging this one.
Check out the Top Five below:
1.) Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney) – 3-day $60.3M/ 5-day $82M/ Wk 1
2.) Elemental (Disney) – 3-day $12.1M/ 5-day $17.9M/ $95.4M/ Wk 3
3.) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony) – 3-day $12M/ 5-day $17.8M/ Total $346.1M / Wk 5
4.) No Hard Feelings (Sony) – 3-day $7.5M/ 5-day $11.1M/ Total $32.9M / Wk 2
5.) Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Paramount) – 3-day $7.3M/ 5-day $10.7M/Total $138.9M/ Wk 4
Can Tom Cruise save ANOTHER summer? We’ll see when Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1 comes out next week. I mean… at the very least, it’ll take down Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
