Tom Cruise’s Digger tanks, leaving studio with US$250m hole
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu comedy featuring Tom Cruise (pictured) was panned by critics and has left audiences cold.
PHOTO: AFP
- Tom Cruise’s eco-satire Digger has flopped, with only US$35.3 million worldwide after two weeks and possible losses of about US$245 million.
- Critics panned the film, and audiences stayed away. Experts called it a disaster financially and said its US$160 million to US$180 million budget made the losses worse.
- Analysts said the film was a mismatch. It was sold like a general release, but its art-house, anti-American style was unlikely to attract a wide audience.
AI generated
LOS ANGELES – The Tom Cruise eco-satire Digger, a movie that was supposed to herald the action hero’s return to serious acting, has bombed at the box office, with industry insiders predicting it could lose about US$250 million (S$320 million).
The Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu comedy, featuring Hollywood star Cruise as an eccentric oil baron who must fix a problem he helped create, was panned by critics and has left audiences cold, leaving studio Warner Bros. with a big balance sheet hole just as a merger with Paramount Skydance closes.
After two weeks in theatres, the film has grossed just US$14.4 million in North America and US$35.3 million globally – tiny numbers for a big-budget movie that point to cumulative losses in the region of US$245 million.
“Financially, it has to be considered a disaster,” Christopher Rosen of Hollywood trade publication The Ankler told AFP.
“It cost anywhere from US$160 million to US$180 million – that’s even before marketing – and it’s made relatively nothing at the box office.”
Marketing for a movie like Digger can cost up to US$100 million.
Daniel Loria of Boxoffice Pro noted that the film was greenlit under the tenure of outgoing Warner Bros. executives Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca, who made a name for themselves by giving film-makers the resources and studio budgets to create original, innovative movies.
“Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Loria said.
As an art-house film that satirises American culture through the lens of a non-American like Mexico’s Inarritu, Digger was perhaps destined to be a heavy lift.
“This movie was never going to get a general audience to get behind it, right? I don’t think it was ever designed like that,” said Loria. “The film takes every opportunity to push the audience in uncomfortable directions.
“American audiences don’t have the easiest time accepting films that criticise American culture, especially when they’re made by foreigners.”
A potential mismatch
The presence of Cruise – a man sometimes credited with rescuing the box office after its Covid-19 pandemic slump with Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – was always going to make the film stand out.
“You’ve got arguably the biggest movie star in the world (who) was literally everywhere for this movie,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a market analyst at Rentrak.
“He was so excited about this movie and working with Alejandro Inarritu.
“By virtue of Tom Cruise’s star power, there was a spotlight on this movie. Anything he does is going to be under a microscope.”
The size of Cruise’s star in the movie firmament makes the comparison even less flattering: Digger was never going to be in the same ballpark as the multibillion-dollar Mission: Impossible franchise (1996 to present).
But the film’s box office does align with the kind of film that Inarritu makes, said Loria.
His movies “aren’t really too worried about their box office total; they’re worried about having an artistic endeavour behind” them. That makes Digger something of a mismatch, said Loria.
“Unfortunately, I think this was marketed as a general audience movie, when at heart, this is an art-house film.” AFP