'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' Budget Breakdown: Is Indy's Swan Song Bombing? (2024)

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny'"Don't look, Marion, keep your eyes shut"! There is a very good chance that the executives at The Walt Disney Company, Lucasfilm Ltd, and Paramount Pictures are saying something along those lines when they're handed the reports for how much money Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is going to potentially lose at the box office. The fifth and reportedly final Indiana Jones film to star Harrison Ford has gotten off to a less-than-stellar start, with an opening weekend return that is just barely higher than the financially-doomed The Flash and significantly lower than the movie's massively disliked predecessor, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

An entry in a franchise as globally beloved and culturally significant as Indiana Jones potentially becoming a box office bomb is something that is almost unfathomable. Again, despite the fourth installment not being very well-liked, it was still a box-office success. The reasoning behind Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's lackluster opening weekend will likely be a point of debate for quite some time. Either way, Lucasfilm's first movie since Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker will have to make up a lot of ground in the next few weeks if it hopes to at the very least break. If not, we're looking at a bomb that may be even bigger than the nuke that Indiana Jones tries to escape by hiding in a fridge. For a full recap of how much the movie is estimated to have cost and how much it needs to make to be a success, here is a complete budget breakdown for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Keep in mind that the full budgetary details for tentpole projects like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny are not typically shared publicly. As a result, much of the following is based on reported data, established net worth, etc.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on July 30.

RELATED:'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' Cast and Character Guide

Budget for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny by Department

Cast

Unlike his famous character of Han Solo from Star Wars, whom the actor is famously ambivalent towards, Harrison Ford absolutely adores the character of Indiana Jones and has expressed interest in making a fifth Indiana Jones film for quite some time. Ford is reportedly set to get somewhere from $25 to $65 million for his fifth turn as the famed archaeologist.

Ford's on-screen co-star, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who plays Jones' goddaughter, Helena), garnered great acclaim for her work on the hit comedy series, Fleabag. She even has worked with Lucasfilm in the past, voicing the droid freedom fighter L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Thanks to her great success in the television world, Waller-Bridge has a net worth of about $40 million, which is likely what she made for Dial of Destiny. Then there's Mads Mikkelsen as the film's main villain, Nazi mathematician Dr. Voller. Mikkelsen has plenty of experience playing villains in films like Casino Royale and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, and he likely made at least $14 million dollars for his villainous turn in Dial of Destiny. As for the smaller supporting actors, such as Antonio Banderas as Renaldo, John Rhys-Davies as Sallah, and Karen Allen as Marion, that's likely another $2 to $3 million to the film's budget.

VFX

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has a lot, and we mean a lot, of digital visual effects. There's perhaps even more CGI and green-screen used here than there was in either The Flash or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Every action sequence is digitally created and much of the environment is created through CGI, such as the opening prologue which sees a de-aged Harrison Ford. The average VFX budget for a project of this size is usually about $65 million, but because the recent film has such a huge emphasis on de-aging technology, CGI battles, green-screen locations, and more, we'd be willing to bet the CGI budget is quite a bit larger.

Filming Locations

Despite most of the movie featuring green screens and closed sets, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny did film on location in Europe. Firstly this includes England, where the lengthy flashback prologue sees Jones come into contact with the titular Dial of Destiny for the first time. Then, the movie was also filmed in Glasgow, Scotland, which was transformed into New York City whilst it was celebrating the Moon landing. Finally, when the film travels to Sicily, so did the camera crew as it was filmed on location (though the Siege of Syracuse sequence likely took place on a soundstage).

Northumberland, England has become a popular shooting location for productions, being the filming location for franchises like Harry Potter, Transformers, Dungeons & Dragons, and more. Filming there reportedly costs about £27,200 per day, which translated to about $34,509.3 per day. Prices for filming in Glasgow vary, but the city offers many tax incentives to encourage big productions. The same applies to Sicily, which also encourages big-budget productions filming there.

Marketing budgets are almost always considered separate from production budgets for blockbuster films, though the marketing budget for Indiana Jones and theDial of Destiny had to have been extensive. The first trailer debuted behind closed doors at the 2022 D23 Expo, where Lucasfilm hoped to spread word of mouth. The trailer was publicly released on December 1, 2022, gaining over 13 million views on Lucasfilm's YouTube channel. A few months later, Dial of Destiny also had a big game spot during Super Bowl LVII, which typically costs at least $7 million to buy on air. Marketing budgets also aren't typically disclosed publicly but can range from $65 million all the way to $200 million. However, typically the higher a film's production budget, the higher a film's marketing budget.

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How Much Does Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Need to Make at the Box Office to Break Even?

The final production budget of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is reported to be about $294,700,000. Not only does this make Lucasfilm's latest feature the biggest budget Indiana Jones film, but it also makes it the thirteenth most expensive movie ever made, coming in behind Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Justice League, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Again, that's not even including the advertising costs, which likely range between $100 to $200 million. Just to break even, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will need to make just shy of $600 million. In order to be considered a success, the film will need to make around $800 million, which is going to be a remarkably tough goal given how the film has been performing so far.

How's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Doing at the Box Office So Far?

To quote Harrison Ford's other famous Lucasfilm character, "I got a bad feeling about this." While Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny had a slightly better opening weekend than The Flash, that doesn't mean much when Dial of Destiny's budget is about a hundred million dollars more expensive than DC's superhero film. The film fell short of already weak projections, with the planned $140 million opening debut falling short by just $130 million. It follows a recent trend of blockbuster Summer films woefully underperforming, which was the case with films like The Flash and another Disney-produced film, Elemental. Still, things could be worse, as Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken decided to open against Dial of Destiny and had the worst opening weekend of any Dreamworks film as a result.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny got a minor win over the weekend before the Fourth of July, pulling in a decent $11.8 million. However, the success didn't last as the film was almost immediately knocked off the top spot on domestic box office lists by Insidious: The Red Door. The horror movie's domination has since continued, and at this point, it will take an Ark of the Covenant-level miracle for the film to make enough to be called a success. One hope would have been that the movie might bring in more profits internationally, but with poor global box office numbers, it looks like that ship has sailed too. As of now, the film has grossed $335 million worldwide, and things are only getting bleaker with the release of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, and the juggernaut, Barbenheimer (Barbie and Oppenheimer). All things considered, it looks like it's time to declare the final Indiana Jones outing a box office flop.

How Do the Budget and Box Office Projections Compare to Past Indiana Jones Films?

Historically, so to speak, the Indiana Jones franchise has been a coveted box office diamond, making huge returns on surprisingly modest budgets. Raiders of the Lost Ark cost $18 million to make and made about $390 million, Temple of Doom cost $28 million to make and made about $333 million, The Last Crusade cost $48 million to make and made about $474 million, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull cost $185 million and made about $790 million. The budget of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny exceeds all of those price tags, yet has almost definitely become the franchise's first box office bomb. The only hope at this point is that the movie may be able to bring in some revenue from Digital sales and streaming.