Hollywood Is Insane

Well, at least Disney/Lucasfilm is insane. From Forbes we get the following. Cost Of Making ‘Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny’ Passes $400 Million

It is hard to believe that Indiana Jones And The Insufferable Feminist is still in the news. I'm sure Disney would prefer to forget about it.

And I'm not even considering, their insane political positions.

Lucasfilm shot the 2023 movie Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny Insufferable Feminist mostly in the UK. This was to take advantage of the tax rebates offered by the United Kingdom. But to get those tax rebates, Disney had to file tax documents for the entire spend of the movie. Caroline Reid at Forbes does a nice job of tracking those documents down. That is a process Disney does not make easy to do.

The latest set of filings show that over the following year, $17.8 million (£14.1 million) was spent on the production bringing its total cost to precisely $419 million. It is a world away from the $300 million that Deadline claimed was spent on the production.

Say that again. Total production cost was $419 million.

Now they did get a hefty rebate on the work done in the UK. There are certain things excluded (salaries for marquee actors and directors, or special effects work done outside of the UK for example) from the rebates.

Disney banked a $66.7 million (£50.3 million) reimbursement in return for filming Dial of Destiny in the U.K. This brought the Mouse’s net spending on the movie down to $352.3 million though even that wasn't enough to give it a happy ending in theaters.

The Numbers lists an additional $14 million in DVD and Blu-ray sales, of which Disney gets most of that. It is not enough to say this movie was anything but a flop.

That $352.3 million dollars does NOT include marketing, of which there was a lot.

Considering the fact that studios do not collect 100% of the ticket sales, but only about half, this number places break-even revenue, before marketing at about $700 million dollars. No, movie theaters do not show movies for free. The fees collected by theaters are called rentals.

This means that of the $384 million dollars of worldwide box office revenue, Lucasfilm received about $192 million. So they lost $192 million $160 million plus whatever they spent on marketing.

Considering that they debuted the film at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, they didn't go easy on marketing. In fact going to Cannes seems to imply that they thought this was a good film. Which means that Disney/Lucasfilm employs no one who knows what a good film is. There was also a Super Bowl ad for Super Bowl LVII. To say that they spent $200 million on marketing would not be a stretch. But even if they "only" spent $150 million on marketing, this was a disaster.

When you add all of this together, for this movie to break even, it would have needed a billion dollars at the box office, more or less. How stupid do you have to be, to place a bet like that on Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and an aging Mel Gibson Harrison Ford, who said at least once, "I don't care," for a billion dollars? Apparently Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy are that stupid.

After some of the stuff the Kathleen Kennedy has approved for Star Wars and Disney+ it is clear that she has no idea what Star Wars is supposed to be, what the fan base wants, or what is good. Let's not even talk about the Star Wars Galactic Cruiser Hotel fiasco. It is also clear that no one at Luscasfilm understands what the Indiana Jones frachise is supposed to be. What isn't clear is why Kathleen Kennedy is still employed by Disney.

The hat tip for this goes to Mr H Reviews and his video Indiana Jones & The Dial Of Destiny Cost $419 Million Disney & Lucasfilm Are Insane. Yes they are.

Apparently Lucasfilm is going to "reboot" the orginal Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. What could possibly go wrong?