Indiana Jones' box office destiny? A lukewarm weekend debut for Harrison Ford's final Indy movie

Indiana Jones, and executives at the Walt Disney Co and Lucasfilm, made a somewhat dispiriting discovery this weekend. Moviegoers didn't rush to the movie theatre in significant numbers to see Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny and say goodbye to Harrison Ford as the iconic archaeologist.

The film, reportedly budgeted north of US$250 million (S$338 million), came in on the lower end of projections with US$60 million in ticket sales from 4,600 North American theatres, according to studio estimates Sunday (Jul 2).

Including US$70 million from international showings in 52 markets, Dial Of Destiny celebrated a US$130 million global opening. It easily earned the No 1 title but was not the high-rolling sendoff for one of modern cinema’s most iconic actor/character pairings that anyone hoped. Disney is projecting that it will make US$82 million domestically through the fourth of July holiday and US$152 million globally.

Dial Of Destiny is the long-delayed fifth installment in the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas-created adventure series that began in 1981, and the first Spielberg himself hasn’t directed.

Veteran James Mangold stepped in to take the reins overseeing the Spielberg-approved script, which finds an older Dr Jones retiring from his university job and swept up on a new adventure with his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

The film made its splashy premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, with a fitting celebration of Ford, who has said this was his last time playing the character.

But then it was hit with lukewarm reviews. This was an unexpected and unwelcome hurdle, considering it was coming after the maligned fourth film, 2008’s Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Another contributing snag was that a significant portion of the target audience, older viewers, don't tend to buy many tickets on opening weekend for big blockbusters. But even Crystal Skull, budgeted at a reported US$185 million, managed to gross over US$790 million.

Second place went to Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse with US$11.5 million, bringing its domestic total to around US$340 million. Elemental landed in third place with US$11.3 million.

Aside from Dial Of Destiny, the weekend's other main new opener was the animated Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, which debuted in sixth place with US$5.2 million.

Dial Of Destiny’s underwhelming debut comes just a few weeks after both Warner Bros’ The Flash and Disney/Pixar’s Elemental had lackluster openings in North America. Elemental, like Indy 5, also premiered at Cannes to middling reception.

Things will only get more challenging for Dial Of Destiny in the coming weeks with a crowded July. Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 opens on Jul 12, followed by Oppenheimer and Barbie on Jul 21.