Tom Cruise’s DIGGER Takes a Brutal Second Weekend Hit and Could Lose $245 Million

Tom Cruise’s Digger is turning into the kind of box office disaster studios study later with the lights off and a stiff drink in hand.

The R-rated environmental satire, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is now reportedly on track to lose $245 million during its theatrical run.

That puts it in the running as one of the biggest box office flops of the year, and maybe one of the biggest of all time.

I figured this movie wasn’t going to be a box office winner, but I didn’t expect it to bomb this hard.

A nearly $200 million experimental art film starring Cruise as a wealthy oil tycoon in a dark comedy was always going to be a tough sell. Still, this is an insanely rough landing.

After opening with $8 million domestically and $20 million worldwide, Warner Bros. was already looking at a painful theatrical loss in the $150 million to $200 million range.

Things got worse in its second weekend, when Digger dropped 60% and brought its total to $14.4 million domestically and $35.3 million globally.

That drop came even after several Hollywood names tried to rally support for the film. Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro, and Mandy Patinkin all spoke up in defense of Digger and encouraged audiences to check it out in theaters.

Unfortunately, moviegoers didn’t show up in numbers big enough to change the story.

At this point, Digger is expected to finish its box office run with around $50 million worldwide. That’s a huge problem when the movie reportedly needs $350 million globally to break even, largely because theaters keep roughly half of ticket sales.

Warner Bros. has pushed back on that figure, with a spokesperson saying the break-even number is closer to $300 million.

Either way, Digger isn’t getting anywhere near either target.

The movie was always a major gamble. Warner Bros. originally greenlit it for $125 million, but the budget reportedly climbed to somewhere between $160 million and $180 million after production ran over schedule.

The studio also spent around $100 million on global marketing, and that doesn’t include awards campaign spending.

A film with Cruise and Iñárritu attached would normally be positioned for a serious Oscar push, which could cost around $15 million. But with reviews hitting hard and audiences staying away, those plans may end up being scaled back.

Things got so rough that Warner Bros. reportedly ran social media ads encouraging people to “decide for yourself,” and they are deciding not to see it.

The financial hit may take even longer for Warner Bros. to absorb because Cruise has a deal that allows him to earn a percentage of revenues before the studio recoups its costs.

Since theatrical performance helps drive later deals for TV, Pay 1, and streaming, Digger underperforming this badly creates problems beyond the box office itself.

The timing also makes this hurt even more for Warner Bros. Digger is the studio’s final standalone release before its merger with Paramount, and it caps off a pretty ugly theatrical year. The studio has already taken hits from underperformers like The Bride and Supergirl.

Warner Bros. co-chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who left the company last Friday as Digger opened in theaters, had a massive 2025 thanks to films like Sinners, A Minecraft Movie, and Weapons.

But this year has been a much different story, with none of the studio’s releases crossing $100 million domestically so far.

There is some hope on the horizon, though. Warner Bros. is expected to rebound in December with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part III, which stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson. That movie should have a much easier time pulling audiences into theaters.

As for Digger, this is probably going to scare studios away from making strange, expensive, adult-driven art films at this scale forever.

It’s awesome when Hollywood takes big creative swings, and I’ll always root for filmmakers trying something different. But when a movie like this crashes and burns with a price tag that high, studios usually run screaming back to safer bets.

Don’t expect to see many more experimental art films with nearly $200 million budgets anytime soon.