A clearer picture is forming after the disastrous box-office debut of Digger, the epic political satire starring Tom Cruise. The movie grossed under $20 million total in its first weekend of release in virtually every country worldwide, but its production budget has been reported to be anywhere between $140 million and $180 million. At this rate, the film will struggle to hit the $50 million mark worldwide, making it one of the biggest flops of Cruise‘s illustrious career as a big-ticket movie star. Digger was marketed as Cruise‘s career-defining Oscars vehicle, and his first non-franchise movie in more than a decade. It was directed by the two-time Oscar-winning Alejandro G. Iñárritu, lending it a high-pedigree sheen.
However, a new report has now calculated the film’s projected losses. Digger‘s release was shrouded in behind-the-scenes controversies, with Warner Bros. being taken over by Paramount and its bosses Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca being on thin ice following a string of flops. This year, the studio has witnessed the box-office failure of movies such as Supergirl and The Bride!, and the underperformance of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, The End of Oak Street, Mortal Kombat II, and Evil Dead Burn. Digger was released around the same time the takeover was finalized, creating a combined entity called Skydance Corporation. Abdy and De Luca were replaced hours after the film’s release.
Here Are the Biggest Flops in History
| Biggest Box-Office Flops | Estimated Loss |
| John Carter | $157 million to $280 million |
| The Lone Ranger | $221 million to $263 million |
| Digger | $250 million |
| The Marvels | $205 million to $250 million |
| The 13th Warrior | $133 million to $249 million |
The movie opened to divisive reviews, with some calling it a flat-out masterpiece and others criticizing it for being too self-satisfied. It now holds a 51% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “A stylized satire whose audacious design proves too mannered for some of the laughs to smoothly land, Digger is a bold swing of the shovel by Tom Cruise and Alejandro González Iñárritu that misses as often as it strikes gold.” Given the traditional 50-50 split between studios and exhibitors, TheWrap estimates Digger could lose as much as $250 million and would need to gross at least $350 million to break even. This would make Digger among the biggest box-office bombs in cinema history, in the same range as the notorious flops John Carter, The Lone Ranger, The Marvels, and Cutthroat Island.
Digger is in theaters now.
via Collider