Digger becomes the biggest box office disaster of Tom Cruise's career
For two decades, Tom Cruise was the one movie star who could open anything. Then he made a $160 million Alejandro G. Iñárritu satire about an oil baron.
Digger opened on October 2 to $8 million in North America and about $20 million worldwide. The production budget was somewhere between $160 million and $180 million, with roughly $100 million in marketing on top, and Deadline estimates Warner Bros. will lose about $150 million. The film finished fifth domestically, behind Amazon MGM's Verity, which took the weekend with $32.6 million. Three weekends in, per The Numbers), Digger had $17.2 million domestic and $41.7 million worldwide, after a 60 percent second-weekend drop and a cut from 3,321 theaters to 786.
The trades all reached for the same comparison: Cruise's lowest opening since Lions for Lambs opened to $6.7 million in 2007. But that movie cost $35 million, Cruise was third-billed behind Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, and Boxoffice Pro notes it broke even globally. The better yardstick is The Mummy, the film everyone called Cruise's last big flop. It grossed $409.2 million on a $195 million budget.
The Mummy was Tom Cruise's last big box office disappointment, and it made $409 million. Three weeks into release, Digger had made $41.7 million.
What Digger actually is
This was never a Mission: Impossible audience play. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an aging oil tycoon trying to prove he's humanity's savior before the disaster he unleashed destroys everything. It's an R-rated, two-hour-plus black comedy shot on VistaVision cameras, with Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and Sophie Wilde around him. It was also built as an awards vehicle: Cruise has an honorary Oscar but has never won one for acting, and a lot of people saw Digger as the role that would change that.
How the weekend got there:
- Tracking: Warner Bros. expected $12 million to $15 million. Box Office Theory had it at $7.5 million to $12.5 million.
- Thursday previews: $1.2 million.
- Opening day: $3.4 million, Cruise's lowest first day ever.
- Reviews: 51 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, 71 percent from audiences, and a C+ CinemaScore. Even the mixed reviews generally praised Cruise himself.
- Week two: down 60 percent.
The defense
Cruise answered the way Cruise does, with gratitude and no hedging. On October 3 he thanked the cast and crew on X:
"The experience was truly unforgettable and I'm so proud of what we created."
— Tom Cruise, on X
Guillermo del Toro went further, calling one of the flop headlines "Entirely Petty" and praising the film's scale and theatrical ambition. Boxoffice Pro made the business version of the same argument: if any star has earned a money-losing swing to show his range, it's the one whose lifetime box office is north of $13 billion.
Don't miss: Birdman ending explained: Iñárritu shot a different ending, and it ended on Johnny Depp
That's a fair point, and it sits right next to the bill. Digger was Warner Bros.' last release before the Paramount Skydance takeover, which the AP called a bitter final note for the studio as an independent company. It closes out a year in which Euronews reports Warner struggled to get any 2026 release past $100 million domestic.
What's left
The box office has finished with Digger. Awards voters haven't started, and a performance that held up under split reviews can still find its way onto ballots. Either way, Cruise has already moved on to the most commercial idea available: Days of Thunder 2, co-starring Anne Hathaway, the Verity star who beat him that weekend.
Previously we wrote: 'This is your fault': fans answer David Zaslav's goodbye to James Gunn