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Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ Opens to $8 Million, His Worst Start in Nearly Two Decades
Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s oil-tycoon satire split critics down the middle, and audiences mostly stayed home. It’s a costly goodbye for Warner Bros. as an independent studio. Tom Cruise has spent the last decade as Hollywood’s surest bet that people will still leave the house for a movie. “Digger” put that to the test, and the answer came back cold. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s black comedy opened to about $8 million in the U.S. and Canada over the Oct. 2–4 weekend, finishing fifth from 3,321 theaters. Overseas markets added about $12 million from 73 territories, for a global start of roughly $20 million. That’s Cruise’s weakest opening as a leading man since 2007’s “Lions for Lambs,” which debuted to about $6 million. A $300 million problem Warner Bros. greenlit “Digger” at $125 million, but Variety reported that costs climbed to $160 million–$180 million after the shoot ran over schedule, with about $100 million more spent on marketing. A studio spokesperson said the film needs to gross around $300 million worldwide to break even. Variety estimated it could lose $150 million to $200 million in theaters. Expectations had been sinking for weeks. Box Office Pro once forecast a $20 million–$30 million debut. By release week, Warner Bros. was projecting $12 million to $15 million. Thursday previews brought in $1.2 million. The weekend belonged to Amazon MGM’s “Verity,” the Colleen Hoover thriller starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, which opened at No. 1 with $32.6 million domestically and $62.5 million worldwide. Sony’s “Resident Evil” placed second with $12.5 million, and Paramount’s “The Heart of the Beast” took third with $11 million. ‘Masterpiece’ or ‘mess’ Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a billionaire oil tycoon racing to prove he’s humanity’s savior before an ecological disaster he caused wipes everything out. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons co-star, and Emmanuel Lubezki shot it on 35mm VistaVision. Critics couldn’t agree on it. The film sits at 53% on Rotten Tomatoes and 44 on Metacritic, making it Cruise’s worst-reviewed movie since 2017’s “The Mummy.” IndieWire’s Jim Hemphill called it Cruise’s best role since “Magnolia,” and Anne Thompson called it “a brave and gorgeous art film.” Awards Radar’s Joey Magidson called it “a mess.” Even its fans tended to single out Cruise and Ahmed rather than the film as a whole. ““Unpleasant” versus “masterpiece.” “Baffling” versus “brilliant.” “Insufferable” versus “magnificent.”” — Warner Bros.’ “Decide for Yourself” ad campaign Warner Bros. leaned into the split. A late TV spot set the bad reviews against the raves and closed on a simple pitch: decide for yourself. The studio also pushed the film as an awards contender that could earn Cruise his fourth acting Oscar nomination. A cult in the making? Still, the weekend numbers may not be the last word. “Digger” is already drawing the kind of passionate following that box office charts don’t measure. On Letterboxd, the film-logging site popular with younger moviegoers, it holds an average of about 3.8 out of 5 — far warmer than its critics’ scores — and has picked up more than 1,600 fans in its first week. One widely shared review there called it the kind of film people will either love now or love a few years from now as a misunderstood masterpiece. Some of the biggest names in filmmaking have rushed to its defense. Guillermo del Toro called IGN’s review “entirely petty” and said the film delivers “in scale, ambition and reach” on a big screen, comparing it to Ken Russell’s “The Devils,” another movie once dismissed as excessive. Alfonso Cuarón, without naming the film, posted a list of classics that critics first panned, among them “Blade Runner” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” It’s a familiar story. “Blade Runner,” “The Big Lebowski” and “Fight Club” all disappointed in theaters before finding devoted audiences on home video and in midnight screenings. “Digger” has the same ingredients: a big, strange swing from a major director, a star playing hard against type, and a reception so split that people feel they have to see it for themselves. Its own marketing practically dared them to. The end of an era The timing stings. “Digger” is Warner Bros.’ last release as a standalone studio, with Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery set to close days after its opening. It caps a rough 2026 for the studio, whose domestic box office stood at about $437.7 million, or 5.6% of the market, heading into the weekend, compared with $1.8 billion at the same point last year. Iñárritu came up with the idea in 2015, after “The Revenant,” and began developing it with Cruise in 2019. Its box office run already looks settled. Its legacy may take years to sort out.