It’s possible that moviegoers were so turned off by 2008’s ‘Kingdom of Crystal Skull’ that they decided to tune out James Mangold’s ‘Indiana Jone and the Dial of Destiny’ by the time it rolled around in the summer of 2023.
Mangold recently had a different theory as to why it failed. The filmmaker told Deadline that it might have had to do with audience reluctance to watch an 81-year-old Harrison Ford reprise his role.
Ford is now tackling the film that resulted in $130M losses for Disney, except, unlike Mangold, he doesn’t have a theory, he’s just brushing it off as another bump on the road:
“Sh*t happens,” Ford tells The Wall Street Journal. “I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell […] I wanted one more chance to pick [Indy] up and shake the dust off his ass and stick him out there, bereft of some of his vigor, to see what happened. I’m still happy I made that movie.”
The price tag for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was a ridiculous $329M. It ended up grossing a disappointing $384M worldwide, which amounted to $134M in losses for Disney (via Forbes). The prior ‘Indy,’ ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,’ earned more than $790M globally. The franchise has officially hit a dead end.
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. And yes, Ford was way too old for this sh*t.
It’s no big surprise then that Ford confirmed that he’s officially retired the character. A rumored reboot with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character now seems very unlikely. There might not be much of a future for this storied franchise.