Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny bombed at the box office, and it was made even worse by its inflated budget. The fifth Indiana Jones movie is the most ambitious release in the series yet, as it has the franchise's biggest action sequences and takes place in three different time periods. Not only that, but the movie sees the return of Harrison Ford, and reprising the iconic role of Indy for the fifth time undoubtedly comes with a huge price tag. This all adds up to a huge budget, and while it was originally reported that the movie cost $295 million, more recent reports estimate that it could have had a budget of up to $400 million (via Indie Wire).
The 2023 release has massively underperformed at the box office, making just $303 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo), and while the movie's still in theaters, it isn't going to make much more than that. That's a huge box office bomb for Disney, but the budget of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny makes its box office performance so much worse. It has been argued that if Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a lower budget, it could have been a success, but that wouldn't be the case unless the Indiana Jones sequel had a budget the faction of what it was.
What Budget Indiana Jones 5 Would've Needed To Break Even, Based On Its Box Office
When it comes to box office performances, the general rule of thumb is that a movie needs to make 2.5 times its budget to break even, as movies generally have marketing budgets equal to their production budgets, and then there's the movie theaters' cut of ticket sales on top of that. Based on that, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny needs to make $1 billion to break even if its budget is $400 million, and based on earlier reports of a $300 million budget, Indiana Jones 5 would still need $750 million to break even. As of right now, the movie isn't even halfway there.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny could reach a worldwide box office gross of $350 million, which is still generous given how high of a percentage drop the movie has gotten week on week. Based on the 2.5 rule, for the movie to break even with a worldwide gross of $350 million, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny should have had a budget of $140. With the movie's current worldwide gross of $303 million, the Indiana Jones 5 budget would need to have been $121 million to break even at this point, and that's without any net profit.
Indiana Jones 5 Would've Had To Be Very Different To Have A Much Lower Budget
Bringing the production budget of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny down to $140 is a nigh-impossible task, as the movie is so ambitious, and it's clear where all that money went. De-aging is extremely expensive, as proven by other budgets of movies that heavily feature de-aging, such as the Martin Scorsese-directed The Irishman, which had a budget of over $200 million (via The de-aging in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is some of the most impressive yet, and with a much lower budget, the de-aging would likely have been a lot worse, and it might have had to be removed entirely.
Other huge action scenes would have been much shorter and whittled down to their bare bones too. The whole 20-minute opening train sequence would have been much less impressive, as would the sequence in 212 BC Syracuse. Ironically, if the movie's budget was lowered to $140 million, the movie's quality would be much worse and likely result in an even worse box office performance. However, as a $140 million budget would completely change the whole movie, the writers would have had to get more creative with the screenplay, and that could have resulted in a better movie overall.
Even At Half The Cost, Indiana Jones 5 Would Be Underperforming
Assuming that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny cost the lowest of the reported figures to make - $295 million - the movie would still have been unsuccessful if the budget was half that. If Indiana Jones 5 was made with $147.5 million, the absolute best-case scenario is that the movie would break even, but even that's unlikely as it'd still have another $63 million to go. With the release of Oppenheimer and Barbie, which are the summer's two biggest event movies, just around the corner, the competition at the box office is simply too much for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to handle.
This is an ongoing problem with major Hollywood movies, as studios are pumping way too much money into action films that are resulting in major losses, and there have been tons of examples of that in the 2023 summer movie season alone. Fast X made $723 million, which would be a success for most other movies, but as the Fast & Furious film had an enormous budget of $340 million, it still underperformed. Similarly, The Little Mermaid made a huge $554 million, but relative to its $250 million budget, it was a box office bomb. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is just another example of this, and even at half the budget, the movie would have bombed.
Why Indiana Jones 5 Failed At The Box Office (Besides Its Huge Budget)
Outside of its enormous budget, there are so many other reasons why Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny failed, and the problems started a whole month before its release. Disney genuinely believed in the film by premiering the movie at Cannes Film Festival an entire month before its release date. Though the studio expected glowing reviews, it was quite the opposite. While Indiana Jones is currently "fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, following its Cannes screening, it was rated "rotten" and sat in the 50s, and that's how it stayed for a full month. The negative word of mouth that early before the official release was the first nail in Indiana Jones 5's coffin.
Though critic reviews were more positive when the embargo was lifted days before the release, the reviews still weren't glowing enough. The mixed reception and an even lower Rotten Tomatoes score than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull also didn't help the movie's box office chances. Along with Oppenheimer and Barbie's impending releases, Indiana Jones 5 faced huge competition too, including Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, Insidious: The Red Door, and the surprisingly successful Sound of Freedom. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's biggest mistake was focusing too much on an older crowd that rarely makes trips to movie theaters.
Sources: Indie Wire 1, 2, Box Office Mojo
