Indiana Jones 5 has been decanonized by fans. Lucasfilm is now 3 for 3.
In May 2026, “NOT Canon?!” started trending on X as Indiana Jones fans openly declared that Dial of Destiny doesn’t exist in their personal continuity. The film lost Disney $134 million in 2023.
A wave of fans began openly declaring that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the 2023 fifth and final film in the franchise, simply doesn’t exist in their personal continuity. The sentiment was not new. The volume was.
“Indy 5, what is this nonsense. Everybody knows there are only 3 Indy films,“ wrote user @skrammz, summing up the dominant framing of the micro-trend.
“There is no Indiana Jones 5,“ wrote @theKageRyu.
“The best thing you can do is not watch, and simply ignore, these Disney productions,“ wrote @ChooksKapow. “Be happy with the original, authentic and timeless movies.“
The fans are not wrong about the financial reality. Dial of Destiny is now a confirmed disaster that cost Disney over $134 million in losses and has been almost completely forgotten less than three years after release. It is the third major Lucasfilm property to be quietly buried under Disney ownership, joining Star Wars and Willow in a row that has now reached three failures in a row.
The financial picture is brutal
The numbers on Dial of Destiny are public and unambiguous.
According to Forbes reporting based on UK financial filings from Disney subsidiary PLT Productions, the film’s total production budget came in at $387.2 million, including roughly $79 million spent in early 2023 just on post-production work, much of it on the de-aging technology used for Harrison Ford’s flashback sequences.
That budget makes Dial of Destiny the third most expensive film ever made.
The film opened on June 30, 2023 to $60 million domestically, well below tracking estimates. It went on to gross $384 million worldwide across its entire theatrical run.
After theater chains took their roughly 50 percent cut, Disney was left with approximately $192 million in box office revenue, against a $326 million net budget after reimbursements. The reported theatrical loss for Disney came to $134.2 million, not counting marketing costs. With marketing factored in, industry estimates put the total loss between $150 million and over $200 million.
For context, Dial of Destiny needed to gross roughly $600 million worldwide just to break even. It came up over $200 million short.
The film earned a 70 percent Rotten Tomatoes critic score and an 88 percent audience score, but the audience score never translated into ticket sales. The B+ CinemaScore from opening day was the lowest of any Indiana Jones film in the franchise’s 42-year history.
Why fans are decanonizing it
The most consistent complaint in the May 2026 X micro-trend was not the film’s box office. It was what the film did to the character.
“What ultimately makes this my least favorite Indy is how they treat Indy himself,“ wrote user @MultiHyphenArt. “Undoing the happy ending of the previous film, moving him to a run-down apartment and a bad job, killing off his only child, just miserable stuff. Makes the whole thing depressing.“
That criticism is referring to the film’s opening, which retcons the family reunion at the end of 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by revealing that Indy’s son Mutt Williams (played in the earlier film by Shia LaBeouf) has died offscreen, and that Indy and Marion are separated and living apart. The film also depicts an elderly Indy living alone in a shabby New York apartment.
User @MrGitz called the film “awful“ and “forgettable.“ He compared it unfavorably to the much-maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: “Indy 4 was far better (competent) and at least memorable.“
User @calle79: “Not only was it the worst Indy film, by a mile, but also just a god-awful movie.“
User @6xb69m5vnmBrian: “Worst in the series by far. I feel bad for Harrison Ford. He deserved better.“
Even the most defensible reading of the film’s plot, the rumored ending in which Indy travels back in time to return the artifacts he “stole,” became its own meme. As user @invaderalex framed it: “One of the few things I do feel was legit killed by the specter of woke. There was a rumor that this film ended with Indiana Jones going back in time to return all the artifacts he ‘stole.’ No one thought Disney could do an Indiana Jones film in good faith in 2023.“
The actual film does include a sequence where the elderly Indy is transported back to ancient Syracuse during the siege of 212 BC, where he expresses a desire to stay. The “returning artifacts” rumor was not literally true, but the deeper concern, that the film would treat the character’s archaeological legacy as a problem to be apologized for, lined up closely enough with what the film actually did that the rumor stuck.
Even the defenders are getting dogpiled
When film commentator Matt Jarbo (@mjarbo) posted a defense of the film on May 28, 2026, the post got 517 likes, 73,000 views, and 141 mostly hostile replies.
“With THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU in theaters,“ Jarbo wrote, “I have been thinking a lot about INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY as it approaches its third anniversary. People were way too harsh on this movie. But as a final Indiana Jones adventure, I think Dial of Destiny is quite wonderful. I really wish more people had given it a fair chance.“
The replies are a wall of disagreement.
“Dial of Destiny was terrible,“ wrote @InfinitRealms17.
“Literally unwatchable,“ wrote @ThePaulAllens. “I got physically ill trying to watch it.“
“This is not a movie. It’s a crime,“ wrote @ACPJ81.
When the most generous mainstream defense a movie can get is buried under 141 replies calling it the worst film in a 42-year franchise, the consensus is no longer in dispute.
Lucasfilm is now 3 for 3
The bigger story is that Dial of Destiny completes a pattern Disney’s Lucasfilm has now established across all three of its major inherited franchises.
Star Wars is the most visible failure. After the divisive sequel trilogy (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker) wrapped in 2019, Lucasfilm’s theatrical strategy has stalled repeatedly.
Solo: A Star Wars Story flopped in 2018. Multiple announced films were quietly cancelled.
The Acolyte was cancelled by Disney+ after one season in 2024.
The Mandalorian and Grogu, the franchise’s first theatrical release in over six years, opened to $81 million in May 2026 and dropped 69 percent in its second weekend, putting it on track to be one of the lowest-grossing Disney-era Star Wars films in history.
Willow was the second casualty. The legacy sequel series starring Warwick Davis premiered on Disney+ in late 2022 to mixed reviews. It was cancelled after one season in March 2023, and in May 2023 was scrubbed entirely from Disney+, alongside several other titles, in a content writedown move. The series no longer exists on any streaming platform. A franchise that George Lucas spent decades trying to revive has been treated as a tax loss.
Indiana Jones is the third. Dial of Destiny lost $134 million, killed any planned animated spin-off, and now the fan consensus has progressed past disliking it to actively pretending it never happened. LEGO, which has been a reliable barometer of Disney franchise health for decades, briefly relaunched its Indiana Jones line in April 2023 with just three sets and has not released a single LEGO set based on Dial of Destiny.
Three franchises. Three failures. Each one inherited from a different filmmaking era. Each one beloved by generations of fans. Each one mismanaged into the ground within roughly a decade of Disney’s $4 billion Lucasfilm acquisition.
What it means
For Indiana Jones specifically, the franchise is functionally dormant. Former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy discussed potential animated series and spinoffs in interviews in late 2023, but none have materialized.
Harrison Ford is 83. No recasting is being publicly discussed. Dial of Destiny is, in every practical sense, the final entry in the franchise as filmed.
The fans have responded by pretending it isn’t.
For Lucasfilm and Disney more broadly, the three-for-three record is now a real reputational problem. Each failure individually could be explained as bad luck, bad timing, or bad creative choices. The pattern across all three of the company’s marquee inherited franchises is harder to dismiss. Bob Iger has publicly acknowledged that Disney “lost focus” on creative quality during the post-pandemic period. The Lucasfilm portfolio is the clearest case study in what that loss of focus actually produced.
For fans, the decanonization trend is partly a coping mechanism and partly a vote. Treating a film as if it doesn’t exist is the closest thing audiences have to a refund on a franchise entry they did not enjoy. When tens of thousands of people independently arrive at the same “it never happened” framing, the franchise has lost something more valuable than ticket sales. It has lost the audience’s willingness to accept the studio’s version of the story.
For Disney’s eventual successor at Lucasfilm, the lesson is uncomfortable but obvious. Three for three is not a streak. It is a pattern. And the patterns that produce patterns like this one tend to outlast the executives who set them up.
Indiana Jones rode off into the sunset in Last Crusade in 1989. As far as a significant portion of the fan base is concerned in 2026, that is still where he is.
The fedora is hanging on the hook. The whip is coiled on the desk. The artifacts are in the museum. And Dial of Destiny, by popular acclaim, is not part of the story anymore.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.
Hat Tips:
X / Twitter (May 19-29, 2026), verified posts from @skrammz, @theKageRyu, @ChooksKapow, @MultiHyphenArt, @MrGitz, @calle79, @6xb69m5vnmBrian, @invaderalex, @naranciagaming, @botulismsundae, @mjarbo, @InfinitRealms17, @ThePaulAllens, and @ACPJ81 documenting the “NOT Canon?!” micro-trend
Forbes (April 2024), original reporting on the $387.2 million total production budget and Disney’s $134.2 million theatrical loss based on PLT Productions UK financial filings
Screen Rant (April 2024 and July 2023), verified box office data, Lucasfilm three-franchise failure analysis, and the comparison to Solo and Willow
Collider (April 2024 and December 2023), verified $60 million opening weekend, $600 million break-even target, and the Cannes-to-wide-release reception arc
MovieWeb (April 2024), additional Forbes reporting confirmation and the Rotten Tomatoes / CinemaScore data
Brick Fanatics (April 2024), verified LEGO Indiana Jones product line analysis including the three-set 2023 relaunch and the absence of Dial of Destiny sets
Saturation.io, comprehensive Dial of Destiny financial breakdown including the third-most-expensive-film-ever-made ranking
Box Office Mojo and The Numbers, archived box office data for Dial of Destiny, Solo, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and The Mandalorian and Grogu
Disney+ archive coverage, Willow cancellation (March 2023) and Disney+ scrubbing (May 2023) timeline
Hollywood Reporter and Variety (2023-2025), Bob Iger “lost focus” comments and broader Disney content strategy coverage
Wikipedia, Indiana Jones franchise box office history and Dial of Destiny production details including the de-aging cost and Harrison Ford age confirmation