Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ Is a Bomb for the Ages

As Warner Bros.’ standalone era ends this week, what a way to go out: Tom Cruise’s Digger has bombed so spectacularly that it already belongs alongside Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate in Hollywood infamy.

The numbers are almost comical: a reported $140 million to $180 million budget before marketing, an $8 million North American opening and just $20 million worldwide.

“This is one for the ages,” says Sean McNulty. 

Further red ink: The comedic satire from two-time best director winner Alejandro González Iñárritu is the worst opening for Cruise since Lions for Lambs ($6.7 million) in 2007.

“It’s a big bet on Tom Cruise,” says Sean. “I love to see a big swing, but I don’t know how you look at this movie and think, ‘Yeah, if we spend $140 million, we have a shot at making, say, $250-300 million globally.’”

Focused on a wealthy oil baron named Digger Rockwell (played by Cruise under heavy prosthetics), the film initially presents itself as a broad satire about careless elites unleashing a global crisis of their own making. The catch is that Digger isn’t quite the movie Warner Bros. sold audiences. An early, deliberately hidden twist radically changes both Cruise’s character and the story’s nature, turning what initially looks like a broad climate satire into a stranger, self-referential movie about art, performance and catastrophe. Warners kept that turn out of the marketing, instead leaning heavily on Cruise’s familiar star power — a gamble that clearly didn’t pay off for WB film leaders Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who will be officially out of that position tomorrow. Maybe they should have seen it coming: Cruise’s last non-franchise film was American Made in 2017, which opened to $17 million, and aside from Top Gun and the Mission: Impossible franchise, his overall track record since 2006 has been solid if unspectacular, with openings ranging from $14 million (Rock of Ages) to $37 million (Oblivion).

“To give Mike and Pam credit, to try to think like them, the ideal scenario for this would have been One Battle After Another,” says Christopher Rosen, invoking the Paul Thomas Anderson movie that made $213 million worldwide last year on a reported $130 million budget and eventually won best picture. But Digger, he adds, is an art-house movie at blockbuster cost. “It’s the most non-mainstream movie I can imagine. Because of its subject matter and storytelling approach, it’s a very anti-audience movie.”

Still, as the obits are being written for Digger as a financial cautionary tale and critics take their swings (the movie has a 51 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes), glimmers of hope — including a 3.8 rating from Letterboxd users, better than Cruise favorites like Jerry Maguire and War of the Worlds — suggest it could become a reclaimed masterpiece in the years to come. Warner Bros. already leaned into that idea with its final run of trailers, playing up the film’s divisiveness. 

“I’m certainly happy that we have Digger,” says Chris. “I’d much rather see 10 Diggers than another Matchbox or whatever other Skydance franchise movies are in our future. But when you take these big swings and miss, it’s a total washout. This is going to make The Bride! look financially prudent.”