Everything Disney touches, turns to shit. Take Indiana Jones, a major flop at the box office, is now facing $100 million in losses.
The trouble is that each sequel cost roughly $300 million before marketing spends of at least $100 million, making them among the most expensive movies of all time. After falling short of expectations, they could lose nearly $100 million in their theatrical runs, according to sources familiar with the financials of similar productions.
“These movies would have been a lot more economical if it weren’t for COVID,” says Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice Pro. “But even if that meant their budgets were inflated, at the end of the day, these movies cost what they cost and performed how they performed.”
Studio executives privately gripe that assessing a movie’s profitability purely on its theatrical results fails to account for what the film earns on demand and through cable and streaming licensing deals. Studios don’t provide complete information about how much money movies generate beyond their box office results. Still, there’s reason to believe that these revenue streams will ultimately make “Dead Reckoning Part One” and “Dial of Destiny” more valuable than their ticket sales suggest. Disney chief Bob Iger, for instance, recently told analysts that although the company was working to reduce the costs of the movies it produces, making “Dial of Destiny” contributed to a surge of interest in previous “Indiana Jones” films on Disney+.