Tag Archives: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Some stories are so incredible, you have a hard time believing them when you first hear them. Actor Jim Caviezel, who you may have seen in things like The Passion of the Christ or the tv series Person of Interest, is the main star of the small indie movie Sound of Freedom (about a former US government agent who rescues children from sex traffickers in Colombia), produced by a studio few will know, Angel Studios, and the movie only cost $14,500,000 to make. In interviews (on podcasts etc) Caviezel complained bitterly about mainstream Hollywood and how they try to sabotage the movie, by convincing theaters not to pick the movie up etc. In the same interviews Caviezel also said that the movie is tracking better than Indiana Jones in the theaters that picked up the movie, something I found very hard to believe. But… in fact, Sound of Freedom only plays in 2,600 theaters in the US, compared to the 4,600 that show Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny.

And now the punchline: Sound of Freedom opened on July 4th and immediately climbed to the top of the US box office, beating the $300 million (plus marketing) behemoth Indiana Jones And the Dial Of Destiny with a box office of $14.2 million vs $11.7 million. And this even though Sound of Freedom only plays in the aforementioned 2,600 theaters, 2,000 less than Indiana Jones. Sound of Freedom made $5,407 per theater, Indiana Jones just $2,543. So Caviezel was 100% correct when he said the movie is tracking better in the theaters that show both movies. Certainly a triumph for Caviezel and a major embarrassment for Lucasfilm and mainstream Hollywood that a smalltime indie movie with a miniscule budget about a topic that may be hard to swallow for some is beating Indiana Jones which just released a few days ago and earns more than twice the money in the theaters that show both.

The #1 movie at the domestic box office, beating Indiana Jones on day 4 of its release

The box office numbers for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny are in, and the opening weekend is the expected disaster. Indiana Jones earned just 60 million USD at the domestic box office. And overseas markets added another $70 million. Now the numbers are still preliminary, the final numbers could be off by +/- 1 or 2 million. Tracking numbers released yesterday said the movie would earn just $58.5 million domestic. Either way, this is the lowest end of the early box office projections.

So what does that mean for Disney and Lucasfilm? Will it mean anything? Head over to Chuck’s article if you want to discuss the movie itself. Here I want to focus on its financial performance and especially if the movie should lead to any personnel changes at Lucasfilm. This is not about whether the movie is good or bad, this is purely about its expected massive financial loss and what results that could have. So click through for a discussion!

Indiana Jones and the Bottle of Booze

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It’s not Star Wars, but definitely related to the fanbase (and Star Wars news is slow right now…). So let’s discuss the latest Indiana Jones release: The Dial of Destiny. Click through for a spoiler discussion. How did you like it? How did Old Indy hold up? How did young Indy hold up? After seeing it last night I thought it was a nice improvement over The Kindom of the Crystal Skull in both story and effects (the CGI in Crystal Skull was pretty bad), and de-aging tech has come leaps and bounds from even from the recent The Book of Boba Fett Luke Skywalker.