2023 is not Disney’s year. 2022 ended with a bang as ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ performed exceedingly well, hitting a box office total of about $2.32 billion. But since then, Disney has had more misses than hits. Even with ‘The Little Mermaid’ bringing in between $525 million and $560 million globally, it isn’t enough. The production costs, theater cuts, marketing, residuals, etc., will likely keep the profits down if they manage to squeeze out a profit.
This was after a huge marketing push.
Disney used to be able to count on Marvel for box office gold, but that’s also been hit or miss with ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ a miss coming in low at $463 million globally, and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ coming in as a relative hit at over $825.5 million globally—nothing is pushing past $1 billion.
Even Pixar has been disappointing with ‘Elemental’ completely fizzling at the box office.
Now it looks like ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ will be yet another box office disappointment.
Box office predictions only have this film releasing at $60-$65 million domestically for three days and maybe $90 million for the five-day weekend.
Considering the budget for the film was at least $300 million, maybe more when you think about all the delays and rumored reshoots, the film needs to perform very well. Like ‘The Little Mermaid,’ Disney tried to market the film heavily, and that added cost. Theaters get a cut, and with residuals and other expenses, the film would need to perform very well to make a profit.
For Thursday previews, the new Indiana Jones film brought in only $7.2 million. This isn’t good when compared to ‘The Little Mermaid’s’ preview take at $10 million. It looks even worse when Warner’s ‘The Flash’ even performed better at $9 million on Thursday previews.
As of now, it doesn’t look like it will perform better. However, it’s the first two days, and that could change. Stranger things have happened.
The Critical Score is not good.
Lucasfilm and Disney boldly chose to debut the film at the Cannes Film Festival weeks before its theatrical release. The reviews were not good. They haven’t gotten much better.
The film sits at a 66% Critical Score, with Top Critics at 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Audience Score is at 88%, and the All Audiences Score sits at 83% after two days. Audiences don’t seem to hate it as much as Critics. One comment made repeatedly was that it was better than ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,’ so that is at least one positive thing.
Another comment that is repeated is that the film is too long.
Our writer Jon Self saw the film and said that while there were issues, including the length, he felt it was a fitting end.
Disney’s box office issues may stem from tired people. People are tired of superheroes. Tired of live-action remakes. Tired of Lucasfilm undoing endings and stories to redo them for a cash grab.
Disney owns many of the big franchises in Hollywood, and maybe they shouldn’t have bought them. They want to squeeze cash out of the IP, but audiences are seemingly burnt out. Many know if they wait, they can watch the films on Disney+ soon enough if they care enough to do so.
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