Tom Cruise’s political satire Digger cratered in its opening weekend, putting Warner Bros. on course for one of the biggest single-film losses of the post-pandemic era. The Alejandro G. Iñárritu film earned $8M domestically and $20M globally, with a C+ CinemaScore and a 51% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Deadline reports that Digger cost a net $160M to produce, before a global theatrical marketing spend close to $100M. If the film reaches a $50M global box office—seen as optimistic—it would lose around $150M.
The numbers behind the miss
This is Cruise’s lowest opening in 19 years. NRG tracking initially suggested a $17M-$23M domestic start, so the actual number came in well below even soft expectations.
Recent comparable misses:
- The Smashing Machine: $21.1M global on a $50M budget
- Amsterdam: $31.2M global on an $80M budget
The gap sits between revenue and cost. Sources put total revenues at $127M against $275M in global costs, including worldwide P&A and home/TV expenses.
Greenlighting the movie
Iñárritu first developed the project at Netflix before taking it to Legendary, where it was built with Cruise in mind. Warner Bros. executives Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy greenlit a $125M production; costs later rose to a reported net $160M at Leavesden.
Marketing presented the film as a side of Cruise audiences had not seen: aging, balding and playing a wealthy oil tycoon. The social analytics firm RelishMix tracked mixed-negative chatter: positive buzz fell from 8.1 out of 10 on Sept. 15 to 6.4 before opening. Viewers repeatedly said they could not tell what the film was about from the trailer.
Why the business should care
For entertainment marketers and platform buyers, Digger is a reminder that star attachment is not a positioning strategy. Cruise’s library still commands $14B+ across 53 titles, but that library value does not guarantee a new film will connect.
The film is also arriving at an awkward corporate moment: the new Skydance-Paramount-Warner structure did not retain De Luca and Abdy. Their slate had commercial wins, but a miss this large hands critics of auteur-driven budgets a concrete number to cite.
What happens next
Warner Bros. is likely to move Digger to PVOD quickly and try to capture curiosity viewing. The theatrical window has effectively failed for this title, so digital rental and home entertainment become the recovery path. For studios, the strategic question is whether original, adult-skewing films should ever again be approved at blockbuster spend.
Source: Deadline
