While 2023 was a great year for original releases, that is not true for several major franchises, including the fifth installment in Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones series. After being in the Disney oven for a long while, the sequel to 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull finally saw the light, which, for the first time in the franchise, didn’t see Steven Spielberg helming.
Led by James Mangold, Dial of Destiny had a huge challenge heading into the box office, following its humongous budget, and unfortunately, ended up becoming a huge financial disaster. But despite becoming a huge flop, it’s nowhere close to the biggest box-office flop in the last decade.
Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones 5’s Failure Pales in Comparison to Mortal Engines
With its budget nearing almost $300M, heading into the theatres, Indiana Jones 5 needed to make a huge splash at the box office. But following the extreme competition it faced during 2023’s summer, by going up against the likes of Oppenheimer, Barbie, Mission: Impossible 7, etc, it only managed to rack in $384M throughout its run. With the financial record finally being disclosed by Disney, movie economics expert Caroline Reid at Forbes reported that the film lost the House of the Mouse a whopping $134.2M.
But despite the huge financial loss, the film is nowhere close to the top spot for being the biggest box-office flop of the past decade, as this title belongs to 2018’s Mortal Engines. Based on Philip Reeve’s highly popular sci-fi novel by the same name, the adaptation hit the screens in 2018, almost two decades after the release of Reeve’s work.
But following the hype surrounding the novel fading off in the late 2010s, upon its release, the film only managed to pull in $84M from its $100-150M budget and ended up losing around $204M.
Indiana Jones Will Keep on Being an Adventurer
Following the huge financial loss of Dial of Destiny, it’s reasonable to assume a potential sixth installment in the franchise isn’t coming anytime soon.
But even though Harrison Ford confirmed that this was his goodbye to the character, James Mangold explained that Indiana Jones will keep on being an adventurer despite retiring as a teacher [in Dial of Destiny].
He told EW:
“I don’t think he’ll ever stop digging. And when he takes the hat off the clothesline, I think it’s because, first of all, you shouldn’t put hats on clotheslines. And second of all, no, I don’t think he’s done. I think that an ending doesn’t mean that the characters never move again in their lives. It just means that you feel that you’ve entered a state of grace with their story… He retires as a teacher [in Dial of Destiny], but I don’t think he will retire from being an obsessive learner, thinker about the past and the future, and science and mankind.”
Only time will tell what the future holds for the iconic franchise moving forward, as with Ford bidding goodbyes and Disney taking a big financial hit, the future of this IP remains uncertain.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is available to stream on Disney Plus.
