Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destinyis proving that there could be a new norm in the world of theatrical movie releases with a big second weekend drop in takings despite continued high audience ratings. The final outing for Harrison Ford’s Dr. Jones has been yet another movie with a huge budget that has massively underperformed at the box office. This follows the trend that has seen movies likeThe Flash, Transformers: Rise of the BeastsandFast Xall fail to live up to the box office potential that they probably would have had pre-Covid.
The fifth Indiana Jones adventure kicked off last week with a lower-than-expected domestic box office of around $65 million, and its reported second weekend is looking to have around a 58% drop, bringing in less than $30 million by Sunday. This again is pretty similar to most movies released in the last couple of years, with only a handful bucking the trend. While this does not necessarily matter for movies with a reasonably low budget,Dial of Destinycarried a hefty cost of around $300 million, meaning that currently the film falls into the realms of being another box office bomb.
What should have been a big family-friendly crowd-pleasing adventure is currently being beaten into second place this weekend by near-R-rated horror sequelInsidious 5: The Red Door,which is currently outpacing Indy despite its horror-leaning premise. This has been the story many times this year, with family focused PG-13 movies struggling to pull in the audiences they usually expect.
Related:Is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny a Box Office Success?
Can Barbie, Oppenheimer and Mission: Impossible 7 Save 2023’s Box Office?
Tom Cruise made a noted effort toencourage people to go to cinemasto not only see his latestMission: Impossiblemovie, but alsoBarbieandOppenheimer. Having given the 2022 box office a massive boost with the release ofTop Gun: Maverick, Cruise will be hoping to be the saviour of theaters once again with his new action-adventure as Ethan Hunt.
Also coming in the next few weeks is Margot Robbie’sBarbie, a movie that seemed certain to be the wild card of the year’s summer releases and is now expected to be one of the most successful movieswith a projected $80 million opening weekend. Christopher Nolan’sOppenheimeris looking to avoid all bomb jokes with a $40 million opening, which for its R-rated certificate is a decent opening.
One thing that is clear is that there are some movies that are guaranteed to deliver a big opening box office, namely anything put out by Marvel Studios for starters, but all other cast-iron certainties are now off the table.The Super Mario Bros. Moviesucceeded in beating all predictions and expectations, whileThe Flashpulled in brilliant early reviews but quickly slowed to a crawl with its gross. Whether this will lead to studios pulling back some of the increasingly high budgets that have been given to the movies expected to deliver a solid return is something that will probably soon be revealed
