The Digger Problem: Hollywood Asked for Risk, Then Didn't Show Up
Two weeks ago, I called Digger Tom Cruise's best performance since Magnolia and one of the most intriguing films of 2026. I also warned that it might not be for everyone. Audiences agreed with the warning.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's satire opened to about $8 million in North America, tied for fifth place, the lowest opening for a Tom Cruise film in 19 years. With a budget reported between $125 million and $173 million, plus roughly $100 million in marketing, Warner Bros. could lose as much as $250 million, according to TheWrap.
I stand by the review. But a flop this size is worth unpacking, because the reasons say as much about Hollywood right now as they do about the film.
By the numbers
Figure
Source
Domestic opening
About $8 million, tied for 5th
Global opening
About $21 million
Production budget
$125 million to $173 million, depending on the report
AP, TheWrap
Marketing
About $100 million
AP, TheWrap
Projected loss
$150 million to $250 million
Deadline, TheWrap
CinemaScore
C+
AP
Rotten Tomatoes
51%
AP
The weekend's winner was Verity, Amazon MGM's Colleen Hoover adaptation, which opened at No. 1 with $32.6 million.
Why it flopped
The star and the movie pointed in different directions. Cruise's audience shows up for him running, jumping and saving the day. Digger buries him under prosthetics as a Southern oil baron in a climate satire. TheWrap's sources say his box office pull simply didn't carry over to that kind of transformation.
The reviews split, and the split hurt. The film sits at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore. Cruise himself got warmer notices than the film. Warner Bros. responded with "decide for yourself" ads, a tell that the studio knew word of mouth was working against it.
It cost too much to be allowed to be strange. TheWrap reports budget overruns, including a prosthetics problem and about $25 million tied to delays while Cruise finished Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. A $173 million original satire needs a hit, and this one needed time to find people.
It landed in a studio on its way out the door. Digger opened as Paramount Skydance closed its roughly $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, with co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy expected to leave. Box office analyst David A. Gross told AP that Paramount has no recent history of making big, auteur-driven films, and that the strategy "appears to be over and out."
What the box office can't measure
None of that changes what is on the screen. Cruise's Digger Rockwell is charming, repulsive and magnetic at once, the kind of fearless, go-for-broke work he used to do for Paul Thomas Anderson and Stanley Kubrick. Iñárritu, in his first English-language film since The Revenant, shot it in VistaVision and walks a tonal tightrope between laugh-out-loud comedy and real dread. Riz Ahmed and John Goodman are terrific opposite Cruise.
In my review I wrote that audiences expecting a Tom Cruise action vehicle might be surprised, and that viewers who want tidy satire might be frustrated. That is close to what happened. The film asks you to meet it on its terms, and on opening weekend, most people didn't.
The bigger worry is what the industry learns from it. In a landscape crowded with sequels, reboots and safe bets, Digger was a major studio film from a major auteur and one of the biggest stars on the planet that actually took risks. If the lesson Hollywood takes is to stop making films like it, audiences lose more than Warner Bros. did.
Read my full review: Tom Cruise Digs Deep in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Gloriously Unhinged Satire
The Cup of Soul Take
Digger had everything it needed to be a success: a global superstar and an award-winning director. But we're living in tough times, and people don't want to see movies that remind them of the harshness of the world. Audiences have also spent years watching Tom Cruise give us action, so seeing him take on such a challenging, unglamorous role was a lot to ask. Perhaps Digger was ahead of its time, and in the end it will become a cult classic.
