Harrison Ford's new movie 'Call of the Wild' set to lose $50m

He might be Hollywood royalty, but Harrison Ford’s new movie, The Call Of The Wild, is being avoided in droves.

After two weeks on release, it’s made $79 million worldwide, but with a production budget of between $125 million and $150 million – thanks to its CGI dog, Buck – it’s looking set to cost Fox a lot of money.

The movie is an adaptation of Jack London’s famous novel, set in 1890s, gold rush era America, with Ford as John Thornton, an outdoorsman who becomes friends with a stolen sled dog in the arduous terrain of the Yukon.

PETA has been among those praising the movie for using all CGI animals, rather than trained animals.

However, such animation is notoriously expensive, and according to Variety, the movie will need to make between $250 million and $275 million just to break even, once marketing costs have been taken care of.

Reviews have been a mixed bag too, with many rounding on the shortcomings of the movie’s ‘uncanny’ main character, but praising Ford’s performance.

It’s the latest in a series of flops for Fox, which will be of some considerable concern to Disney, which bought up the studio last year.

While Disney had a record box office year in 2019, making a staggering $13 billion, the most ever by a single studio, Fox has had a raft of failures.

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These include the X-Men movie Dark Phoenix, which lost somewhere around $110 million, Kristen Stewart thriller Underwater, which also lost tens of millions of dollars, and Brad Pitt’s Ad Astra, which is thought to have lost $30 million.

And despite an Oscar win for Renee Zellweger, Judy Garland biopic Judy only ended up making $40 million worldwide.

Fox also had a hand in distributing Terminator: Dark Fate, which lost a staggering $130 million.