Older-skewing franchises are usually slow out of the gate. Both Mission: Impossible — Fallout and No Time to Die had relatively soft domestic openings, but ended up grossing nearly $800 million worldwide. For its own sake, Disney would hope that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has a similar trajectory at the box office, because its domestic debut doesn’t seem very promising. The fifth film in the iconic franchise came in at the lower end of projections, and grossed an estimated $60 million in its three-day opening weekend, after a $24 million Friday. The movie is expected to generate $82 million across the five-day extended weekend, which would still not be enough to eclipse the $100 million debut that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull delivered 15 years ago.

And many people didn’t even like that movie. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull managed to gross more than $300 million domestically and more than $700 million worldwide by the end of its theatrical run, turning a nice profit for Paramount, which held the rights to Lucasfilm projects back then. But Dial of Destiny — the first film of the franchise to not be directed by Steven Spielberg, or have a story by George Lucas — is being distributed by Disney. The studio spent a reported $295 million on producing the film, and millions more on marketing it across the world. Dial of Destiny will have to stage a remarkable comeback if it wants to be counted as a success. For context, Fast X had a better three-day debut some weeks ago, and that movie is tapping out with less than $150 million domestically.

The movie’s soft opening would’ve been disappointing under any circumstances, but considering that this is star Harrison Ford’s final time playing the legendary character, the sadness hits harder. Disney was bullish about the Dial of Destiny, premiering it at the Cannes Film Festival some weeks ago. But to everybody’s surprise — James Mangold is usually a reliable director — the movie earned mostly mixed reviews. Reactions have been slightly more positive stateside, with the film currently sitting at a borderline “fresh” 68% score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and with a B+ CinemaScore from opening day audiences.

Image via Disney

RELATED: Why Isn’t Mutt in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’?

There Was Little to Celebrate at This Weekend’s Box Office
After fighting it out for the top spot last weekend, two animated films — Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Disney’s Elemental — were involved in a closely contested battle for the number two spot this week. While Across the Spider-Verse, which has so far pulled a phenomenal $339 million domestically, added $11.5 million in its fifth weekend, Elemental, which staged something of a comeback last week after a disappointing debut, brought in $11.3 million. This takes the Pixar film’s running domestic tally to $88 million, which doesn’t look that bad after all, considering the almost record-low debut that the movie delivered a couple of weeks ago. Elemental is still far from a success, but at least positive word-of-mouth is helping it save face.

The fourth spot this weekend went to Sony’s raunchy R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings, which added $7.5 million to its domestic tally after a promising debut seven days ago. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, the movie has made nearly $30 million domestically so far. Rounding out the top five was Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which generated $7 million this weekend — its fourth — and took its running domestic total to an underwhelming $136 million. The movie isn’t faring much better globally either, and only just passed the $350 million mark. It remains the long-running franchise’s lowest-grossing entry at the worldwide box office. Meanwhile, The Flash slipped outside the top five, and is yet to pass $100 million domestically as it nears the end of its catastrophic theatrical run.

You can watch our interview with Dial of Destiny stars Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.