Tom Cruise and Barbie are the only heroes left to save Hollywood’s summer

While the international box office brought total receipts to well over $100 million, that’s still a modest sum for a film widely reported to have cost almost $300 million to produce, and tens of millions more to market and distribute.

The summer is shaping up as a disappointment for Hollywood and for theaters trying to recover from the pandemic. Big pictures, like The Flash from Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and Elemental from Disney’s Pixar, haven’t delivered fans as hoped. Dial of Destiny did well with older moviegoers who remember Indiana Jones, though not enough of them turned out. And the film failed to excite young audiences.

“Franchises have a head start, but they still need to bring something fresh and creative — every time — to excite moviegoers,” David A. Gross, founder of an industry research group, said in an email. Two successful recent pictures, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the latest Spider-Man picture, met that criteria, he said.

Other summer films with tepid performances include Universal Pictures’ Fast X, which debuted in May to $67 million, among the lowest of the 10 films in the Fast & Furious series, and Disney’s The Little Mermaid, a live-action remake of the 1989 animated hit that fell short of industry projections.

Through the July 4 holiday, domestic theaters have rung up ticket sales of $4.61 billion, an increase of 17% from last year, researcher Comscore Inc. said Wednesday. But revenue remains 21% below the same period in 2019 and sales for the summer movie season are running about 2% below a year ago.

Dial of Destiny came in at the low end of the $80 million to $103 million projected by Box Office Pro for the five-day holiday.

As of last week, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts were anticipating full-year ticket sales of about $8.8 billion in North America, citing Box Office Pro. That’s down from a peak estimate of $9.2 billion just a few weeks ago and far less than the $11 billion-plus logged annually before the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The miss is another troubling indicator for theaters since summer box-office receipts are now trailing 2022 comparables,” they said in a note Wednesday.

The analysts also fret that production delays tied to striking writers in Hollywood could push a full recovery for the theatrical industry beyond the next two years.

The tally for Dial of Destiny showed fans retain some affection for the adventurous professor Indiana Jones, played again by Harrison Ford, despite a 15-year gap since the last picture. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opened to weekend sales of $100 million in North America in 2008 and went on to take in $790.7 million worldwide.

In the latest film, Jones, played by the 80-year-old Ford, races to retrieve an artifact that can change the course of history. His co-stars include Antonio Banderas and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Karen Allen returns as Marion.

Fans who turned out liked the movie, with 88% favorable on Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates review. Critics were also mostly upbeat, with about two-thirds recommending the picture. Nearly 60% of theater attendees were over 35 years old, compared with just 26% of those who saw the Super Mario film in April. The younger moviegoers came out in force however, making that picture the top-grossing film of the year so far.

Some big successes later this month could ease the disappointment. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, a Paramount Pictures release featuring Tom Cruise, opens July 12 and is forecast to generate more than $300 million in North America, according to Box Office Pro. Warner Bros.’ Barbie, out nine days later, could bring in as much as $240 million domestically. Universal’s Oppenheimer, from director Christopher Nolan, opens the same weekend.

Another Cruise-Paramount Global collaboration, Top Gun: Maverick, was among the highest grossing films of 2022 in the US, with $718.7 million in ticket sales.