Harrison Ford responds to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny massively bombing and failing at the box office. The film is reported to have lost Disney $134.2 million, said to be driven by numerous rewrites and reshoots that ballooned the budget to nearly $400 million.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opened in June of 2023 and only brought in $383.9M worldwide.
What did Harrison Ford say?
In an interview with the WSJ while promoting his role as the Red Hulk in next week’s Captain America: Brave New World, Ford responded to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as follows :
“Shit happens. I was really the one who felt there was another story to tell. When [Indy] had suffered the consequences of the life that he had to live, I wanted one more chance to pick him up and shake the dust off his ass and stick him out there, bereft of some of his vigor, to see what happened. I’m still happy I made that movie.”
Director blames fans
Director James Mangold previously addressed the film’s underperformance and questioned if anything they could have done would have made the fans happy:
You have a wonderful, brilliant actor who’s in his eighties. So I’m making a movie about this guy in his eighties, but his audience on one other level doesn’t want to confront their hero at that age. And I am like, I’m good with it. We made the movie. But the question is, how would anything have made the audience happy with that, other than having to start over again with a new guy? And then here come lifelong heroes from my childhood into my life going, “We have something for you to work on.” It was a joyous experience, but it hurt in the sense that I really love Harrison and I wanted audiences to love him as he was and to accept that that’s part of what the movie has to say—that things come to an end, that’s part of life.
Mangold also confirmed they changed things up including the ending. Reports offered that originally, Indy was going to die and be replaced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character, Helena.
