Digger, starring Tom Cruise, is a major flop at North American box office with US$8 million opening

LOS ANGELES – On paper, it all sounded great.

American superstar Tom Cruise meets Mexican auteur Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and together they construct a satire lampooning the power-hungry billionaire class.

Warner Bros., the film-maker-friendly studio under the guidance of Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca, believe in Inarritu, who had made two very different films – Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015) – into back-to-back Oscar Best Picture nominees.

But that was over a decade ago.

Whether audiences were rejecting the idea of their never-ageing action star Cruise in a quirky dramatic role playing a grey-haired older man, or they were following the dismal reviews of the film, Digger is on track in its opening weekend to be a resounding flop.

Audiences gave the film a C, according to marketing research company CinemaScore.

Opening in more than 3,000 locations in North America, the M18-rated movie grossed an estimated US$8 million (S$10 million) over the weekend.

The studio has said the film cost US$125 million, but others put the total closer to US$150 million because of a delay in production after a cast member, John Goodman, fell on the set and had to recover before shooting could continue.

With nearly US$100 million more spent on marketing – Cruise flies only private – the studio could lose US$125 million to US$150 million in total, making it one of the biggest flops of 2026.

It is an extraordinary capper for a year that has been marred by misfires. None of the 2026 films by Warner Bros. has grossed more than US$100 million, and Supergirl and The Bride both produced big losses for the studio.

Now, Digger will be the final movie it will release as a stand-alone studio before it is scooped up by Paramount. The deal is set to close on Oct 6.

That is quite a different fate from a year ago, when the studio was riding high on its box-office successes with Sinners and Weapons and its big Oscar winner, One Battle After Another.

Warner Bros. executives declined to comment on the film’s performance, but industry watchers are calling it the end of an era.

“This was an eccentric story and WB deserves credit for taking the risk,” said David Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box-office numbers, on the studio.

“But Digger is not working, and Paramount, headed by David Ellison, Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, will soon decide what kind of movies they want from WB. Paramount does not have a recent history of making big, auteur-driven films like this.”

In contrast, Amazon MGM released Verity, the fourth adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel in the past two years, to an estimated US$33 million. That put the psychological thriller in first place over the weekend and in the middle of the four adaptations, based on gross.

Directed by Michael Showalter, Verity received weak reviews, though it was not the worst reviewed of the four Hoover projects. That title belongs to Regretting You, from October 2025.

It is also not the best-performing one either. That was It Ends With Us (2024), which earned US$351 million worldwide. Verity will still be a sizeable hit for the streamer. Earning an additional estimated US$30 million overseas, on a production budget of US$40 million, it does not have to do much more to become profitable.

The movie was Anne Hathaway’s fifth theatrical movie of the year, and with Verity hitting No. 1, it will mark the American actress’ third first-place finisher in 2026.

Hathaway, who is also a producer on the film, plays Verity Crawford, a famous novelist who has been left in a catatonic state after a car accident. American actress Dakota Johnson plays the struggling writer brought in to finish the novel Verity has left, but all does not appear as it seems.

The film has been embraced by audiences, primarily women, who turned the novel into a bestseller. NYTIMES