It should have all been so easy. A shiny new acquisition of Lucasfilm. Disney now owning the cinematic titans of Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
A wave of profits was surely about to lap gently at the walls of the House Of Mouse.
Except it didn’t. Star Wars is now largely a wreck, while they achieved the almost impossible feat of creating an Indiana Jones movie that almost nobody went to see and those that did, didn’t like it very much.
Just how much of a financial disaster Indiana Jones was is revealed in a new tax filing.
Unlike in the US, where a myriad of Hollywood accounting practices always masks the true cost of movies, with subsidiaries and departments renting chairs and coffee mugs to each other at wildly inflated prices, when they shoot in the UK they have to be a little more honest.
If they want to take advantage of the tax breaks that get Donald Trump so excited then they need to come clean, or at least cleaner, in their filings.
His filing has revealed that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is one of the most expensive movies ever made, at $419 million prior to tax credits.
The figures were reported by Forbes based on the tax filings of Disney.
Disney received a $66.7 million (£50.3 million) reimbursement in return for filming in the U.K.
In the US, the figure cited as the budget of Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny was $300 million. Clearly it was much higher, even after tax rebates are applied.
The movie made $384 million globally, so the report puts the losses from the title, including all of the above shenanigans, at around $160 million.
The final $352 million cost makes it the ninth most expensive movie ever made.
