Kathleen Kennedy's Latest Woke Destruction of a Beloved IP, Indiana Jones, Bombs on Its Opening Night

Andre from Midnight's Edge posted this picture
of the IMAX theater he saw Indiana Jones in,
in Norway, a few days ago when it debuted there.
It's basically empty.

Indiana Jones made only $7.2 million yesterday in "Thursday previews."

I don't know why they just don't admit that films debut on Thursdays now. Why maintain the fiction that they debut on Fridays and the full day of showings on Thursdays are just "previews"?

At any rate, $7.2 million is a very bad opening night for film that cost at least $320+ million.

Deadline Hollywood notes that this puts it on par with No Time to Die -- which made $55 million its opening weekend. (And which also had a blowout bonanza budget, further embiggened by covid shutdowns and release delays.)

Disney/Lucasfilm's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny came in at $7.2M in previews per Disney. We heard last night that the pic was heading for $6 million-$7.5 million last night. That's where previous older-skewing action-guy comps live.

Most older-skewing action-guy pictures don't cost $320+ million.

We're specifically referencing the Thursday night starts of No Time to Die, which grossed $6.3M (started at 4 p.m.) before its $55.2M opening weekend in October 2021, and 2018's Mission: Impossible -- Fallout which made $6M before its $61.2M weekend start. Dial of Destiny, which started previews at 3 p.m. Thursday, is expected to gross between $60M-$65M at 4,500 theaters, making is the second-highest stateside opening...

Oh, you're not adjusting for inflation, of course. So every new movie will make more than movies released in the 80s, or even the aughts.

Unless they're really bad. I mean, there's no way this movie could be beaten by Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is there?

... for the Steven Spielberg-George Lucas franchise after 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which posted a five-day opening of $151.9M, after a 3-day of $100.1M. Crystal Skull didn't have previews but opened fully on the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend with $25M at 4,260 theaters.

In other words, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull admitted it was opening on Thursday, and so did not include Thursday's "previews" in its Friday-to-Sunday total, but kept that $25 million separate from the weekend tally. Dial of Destiny, on the other hand, is pretending that Thursday's "previews" are really Friday sales, and so will include the $7.2 million in the "weekend tally."

Dial of Destiny's Thursday night is below recent dude movies, John Wick 4 ($8.9M, $74M 3-day) and Fast X ($7.5M, $67M).

And John Wick only cost $100 million.

Meanwhile, Kathleen Kennedy continues working her Woke Magic on the other big LucasFilm property.

She tapped Harvey Weinstein's former assistant to produce yet another awful Star Wars TV series for Disney Minus. That former Harvey Weinstein assistant, "Leslye" (sic) Headland, is a woman and a lesbian, so Double Word Score on that.

But that's not all. She cast a black, lesbian, and nonbinary actress as the series lead for The Acolyte.

Triple Word Score!

Star Wars Hits Grand Slam Of Woke Identity Politics, Casts Black, Lesbian, And Non-Binary Intersectional Feminist Amandla Stenberg As The Acolyte Series Lead

In confirmation of a previous rumor first suggested by film scooper Grace Randolph, Disney's upcoming High Republic-era live-action Star Wars series The Acolyte has found its lead the black, lesbian, and non-binary actor and intersectional feminist Amandla Stenberg.

Oooh, and Intersectional Feminist too?

Her previously activist activities include having engaged in such activities as attempting to organize "a workshop on feminism (specifically how mainstream feminist movements have continuously excluded women who are not white, thin, cisgender, able bodied and neurotypical)" and even co-writing a comic book, NIOBE: She is Life, which gone on to be praised as an exemplary piece of identity politics-fueled art.

Is there such a thing as a Quintuple Word Score? Or maybe just making a word with two Z's and an X?

Well don't worry too much about that, because having a black lesbian nonbinary lead wasn't enough for Woke LucasFilm. They also cast a transgender in a major role.

Wow, a black lesbian nonbinary intersectional feminist and a transgender.

I don't want to be greedy, Leslye -- but is there a chance you could possibly make this Star Wars tv show about today's politics and minority grievance culture, by any chance?

You can?!! Super!

Leslye Headland Confirms The Upcoming Star Wars Series 'The Acolyte' Will "Look Into What's Going On For All Of Us Right Now"

John F. Trent

The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland recently confirmed that the upcoming Star Wars series on Disney+ will be a commentary on current American society, culture, and politics.

In an interview with Empire Magazine that was shared to the StarWarsLeaks subreddit, Headland discussed the series saying, "When you're doing something completely original, like we are, you want to question the status quo of the era that you live in."

Perfect, that's just what we're all looking for, more Woke Identity Politics. We want to move seemlessly from watching sledgehammer-subtle propaganda on CNN to watching sledgehammer-subtle propaganda in our Space Wizard escapist fantasies.

Valliant Renegade points out that a Wall Street analyst, KeyBanc, has downgraded Disney's stock. Not based on the release of Indiana Jones, but based on its generally poor performance of late, worries about their parks, and concerns about their streaming services (including ESPN).

He points out that despite Disney's woes over the past five years, Wall Street had been willing to shrug off each of its stumbles, reasoning that Disney has had a strong run since the 90s, and would right itself soon enough.

But one analyst now says it's time to stop giving Disney infinite passes for poor performance.

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispel downgraded Disney stock (DIS) to Sector Weight from Overweight on Thursday, citing "meaningful uncertainty" as the 2024 financial setup "feels a lot like the 2023 setup."

I think that means they've changed their advice from "have more Disney stock in your portfolio" to "have less."

Nispel called out five areas of concern, which include stalling direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscriber growth, a failure to differentiate DTC churn, sagging Disney content sales, a "materially harder" reality for moving ESPN to streaming, along with fears that domestic park expectations appear too high in the US.

"We prefer to step aside, acknowledging meaningful uncertainty, and wait for further catalysts, as buying the dip has been a losing trade," he wrote in his note to clients, adding he sees "more negative than positive [near-term] catalysts."

Valliant Renegade points out that people have thought for a long time that Disney's woes were transitory, and so would "buy on the dip" -- buy Disney at its low "on sale" price, expecting the stock's value to rise. But KeyBanc is saying that that hasn't worked out -- people bought the stock at a low price, and then it stayed low.

On the streaming side, KeyBanc expects further losses from Disney+ and Hulu as growth tapers off amid escalating competition.

Disney stock saw its biggest decline in six months after the media giant reported Disney+ shed 4 million subscribers in its fiscal second quarter following recent price hikes.

ESPN remains another murky area for the company...

[N]ispel noted recent Keybanc survey data shows a "low willingness to pay."

"Who's going to pay $30+/month for ESPN? Not many," the analyst wrote.

Speaking of the dogshit on the bottom of the media's shoe that is ESPN: ESPN firing 20 of its on-air " " " talent. " " " I would use more quotation marks but it would just get annoying.

ESPN is laying off some of its biggest stars, including Jeff Van Gundy, Max Kellerman, Keyshawn Johnson, Suzy Kolber, and Jalen Rose, in a purge that is expected to result in around 20 on-air personalities being let go Friday as the network hopes to save tens of millions of dollars, The Post has learned.

People around the country are posting about the theaters being empty for Indiana Jones:

Critical Drinker calls Phloebiana Jones a "disaster" and "an absolute calamity of a film." Warning, contains obscenities and actual profane-the-name-of-God profanity.

A good epitaph for Disney/Kathleen Kennedy "Lucas" Film:

My only real thought was: Well, that's it, then. That's it, over. Not just the film, not just the character of Indiana Jones, but in a bigger sense, the very legacy of George Lucas himself. This was it. This was the last property left for them to destroy. And destroy it they did. The cupboards are bare now. They've consumed everything that was built up by their predecessors. And now there's nowhere left for them to hide. There's no excuses left to make. This movie is absolutely going to crash and burn, and it deserves to. Because maybe then it will finally force them to accept the truth: They are not creators. They are not capable of creating great things like their predecessors did. They are not even capable of making mediocre things. They are destroyers, not creators. And when you run out of things to destroy, well, maybe you'll be next.

Speaking of...

How about the latest almost-certainly-false "Kathleen Kennedy is finally being fired!" rumor?

Doomcock talks to Kamran Pasha about rumors that Kathleen Kennedy is being fired due to the poor opening of the movie. Previously Pasha's source told him that Iger summoned Kennedy into his office and told her that unless Indiana Jones made an actual profit -- made more than $900 million -- there would be "consequences."

Now Pasha said his source tells him the offices are in "chaos," and an order was sent to deactivate Kathleen Kennedy's Lucasfilm and Disney emails. Pasha said he wrote an email to that address, pretending to be a fan, and within two seconds, the message came up: "User not found."

His source also claims that Disney sent over five executives to LucasFilm, who the source calls "the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse," who have been given carte blanche to tour and inspect anything in the office.

But... look, she's never going to be fired. I've been talking about rumors of her firing for years. I've wrongly predicted her firing more times than I've predicted favorable preference cascades.

And it doesn't matter if she's fired or not -- she has destroyed all the male-skewing (spit) IPs she set out to destroy.

That's her victory. Neither of these franchises will ever be back. They're dead and buried, donezo.

Either men will accept that they are subordinate to superior women, or their minor pleasures will be taken from them.

posted by Lamont the Big Dummy at 04:20 PM

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