Harrison Ford Breaks Silence on Indiana Jones 5 Flopping at the Box Office

Harrison Ford is speaking out about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny failing to find fortune and glory at the box office. The fifth and final Indy movie — which cost a reported $300 million-plus — grossed just $384 million worldwide, whipping up a $130 million loss for Disney. But Ford, 82, doesn’t regret unearthing the archaeologist for one last adventure and sending the Indiana Jones franchise riding into the sunset after 42 years.

“Sh-t happens,” Ford told The Wall Street Journal in an interview pegged to new movie Captain America: Brave New World. “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.” 

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The James Mangold-directed Dial of Destiny picked up years after 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which ended with Ford’s Indy marrying Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood. By the time of Dial, set in 1969, the couple had separated following the death of their son, the Shia LaBeouf-played Henry “Mutt” Williams, in the Vietnam War.

Ford led a cast that included Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) as Indy’s goddaughter, Helena Shaw, Antonio Banderas (Uncharted) as frogman Renaldo, Toby Jones (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) as Helena’s father and Indy’s friend from World War II, Basil Shaw, Mads Mikkelsen (Doctor Strange) as Nazi villain Dr. Jürgen Voller, and John Rhys-Davies, reprising his role as Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade.

Dial of Destiny opened in first place at the box office in June 2023, collecting $60 million in its opening weekend. The movie fell to second place in its second week, dropping behind new release Insidious: The Red Door ($33 million) with an additional $27.4 million over the Fourth of July holiday. By its third week, another new release, the Tom Cruise action movie Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, overtook Dial, which dropped to fourth place with $12.2 million. Its fourth week faced competition from “Barbenheimer,” the phenomenon of the blockbusters Barbie and Oppenheimer, as Indy dropped another 46% to $6.6 million.

The Lucasfilm release finished its 77-day box office run with $174.4 million domestically and $209.4 million internationally for a global cume of $384 million, making it the second-lowest grossing Indiana Jones movie behind 1984’s Temple of Doom ($333 million). 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark took in $389 million when counting subsequent re-releases, while 1989’s trilogy ender Last Crusade grossed $472 million. The highest-grossing Indy movie is Crystal Skull, the twenty-years-later franchise revival that whipped up a global box office of $786 million despite generally poor fan reception.

All five Indiana Jones movies are streaming now on Disney+. Ford makes his MCU debut when he next stars as U.S. President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross/Red Hulk opposite Anthony Mackie in Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World, playing in theaters Feb. 14.