Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Opening Weekend Expectations, Domestic and Global

Last week did not see Boxoffice Pro's already low and falling expectations for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's domestic opening change much. All that happened was a slight shift of the ceiling downward, as the floor remained constant, the projected range now $68-$95 million (while Boxoffice Pro's long-range projections were unchanged from $211-$325 million, which would only make sense on the basis of the optimistic expectation of the movie having legs at least as good as those of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and better than tripling the opening weekend take). However, we now have a projection for the global opening--of some $140 million. That is to say that the film is expected to make globally on its debut more or less what it made in North America alone--back when the dollar was worth forty percent more than it is now (and the $100 million debut of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull back in May 2008 was equal to about $140 million today).

This is not a great vote of confidence in the movie's foreign performance--which matters greatly. The last two Indiana Jones movies took in about one-and-a-half times their domestic income internationally, which would, on the basis of Boxoffice Pro's (admittedly optimistic) figures, work out to between $300 and $500 million above its domestic take, and a global total in the $530-$810 million range--the high end of which, if still a disappointment, would not necessarily be disastrous. (Indeed, there would be some hope of the movie not just breaking even but turning a profit by the time the income from home entertainment, etc., is in.) However, should, as seems possible if one sticks with the $140 million opening weekend (in which the movie at best matches its domestic gross, and maybe does less well than that) as a basis for the longer run projection, we would be looking at a lot less money taken in, and certainly the "Solo or worse" scenarios I have been discussing here since April that, especially since the colossal misfire of the Cannes premiere, have moved from being the outlier to the baseline.

Simply consider the math. With an opening weekend take of $140+ million, and the film doing well to triple that (the way Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has been doing), the movie would still end up in the range of $420-$450 million--which is markedly lower than the $475 million that Solo's gross would be when adjusting the figure ($393 million) for today's prices. Meanwhile, should the movie really fall flat (should its opening weekend be followed by collapse domestically, and its overseas gross be no better than its domestic) it could do a lot worse than Solo even in current dollar terms. (Doubling a $68 million take domestically, matching that overseas, works out to a gross of not much more than $270 million--so that there would be plenty of room to do better than this and still fail to match Solo's gross in current, never mind real, terms.)

Still, grim as the prospects looks, a possibility of the movie's at least triumphing over the worst-case scenarios cannot be completed ruled out. And this Friday moviegoers all across America, and around the world, will get their say, and we will once more see speculation give way to historical fact as the theaters and the studios total up the cold hard cash paid by the ticket-buyers--and Lucasfilm weighs it against the outlays that led up to this moment.