Tom Cruise's 'Digger' Flops Hard as Fellow Directors Defend Director
Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu's big-budget satire 'Digger' is a box office catastrophe, per a report from The Hollywood Reporter. The Warner Bros. film, which stars Cruise as an oil tycoon who causes a natural disaster, opened to a dismal $8 million in the U.S. and just $12 million overseas.
The film's reported budget ballooned to around $180 million, with an additional $100 million spent on marketing, making its financial failure a major loss for the studio. The outlet reports a pervasive sadness among the Warner Bros. team over the film's failure to find an audience, despite internal enthusiasm.
In the wake of the flop, Iñárritu's longtime collaborators Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro have publicly defended him, according to a separate THR story. Del Toro blasted an IGN post advising audiences to skip the theatrical release as "entirely petty," while Cuarón posted a series of historical critical pans of now-classic films.
The trio, known as the "Three Amigos," have supported each other's work for nearly three decades. /Film analyzed the failure, noting the film's divisive reception and unclear marketing, which failed to convey why the non-action Cruise vehicle was a must-see event. The site also pointed to stiff competition from new releases like 'Verity' and holdovers like 'Resident Evil.'
As THR notes, the film's marketing in its final days leaned into the divisive response, with one ad highlighting negative reactions. An analytics expert told the outlet that while Cruise has earned the right to take creative swings, his star power alone doesn't guarantee a mainstream blockbuster.
