5 minBusiness
Tom Cruise's 'Digger' Flops With $8 Million Debut as Warner Bros. Nears Paramount Merger
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's big-budget satire 'Digger' opened to just $8 million domestically and $12 million overseas, one of the worst debuts of Tom Cruise's career, arriving days before Paramount Skydance closes its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Warner Bros.' big-budget gamble «Digger» collapsed in its opening weekend, grossing just $8 million domestically and handing Tom Cruise one of the weakest debuts of his career. The Alejandro G. Iñárritu satire, which cost at least $125 million to produce and roughly $100 million more to market, arrived in fifth place at the North American box office and delivered a bitter final note for Warner Bros. as a standalone studio.
International results offered little relief. The film took in $12 million from 74 overseas markets, a weak showing for Cruise, who is typically a major draw abroad. Estimates for «Digger» had already been revised downward over the past week after reviews proved so harsh that Warner Bros. opted to run «decide for yourself» advertisements urging audiences to form their own opinions.
Critics, who gave the film a 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, described it as a strained climate change farce, though Cruise's over-the-top performance drew somewhat warmer notices. Audiences were similarly unimpressed, awarding it a «C+» CinemaScore.
The opening lands at a moment of transformation for Hollywood. Paramount Skydance is closing its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved the $110 billion deal, with Paramount saying it would finalize the merger on Tuesday. Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who greenlit «Digger» as a potential awards-season heavyweight, are expected to depart this week, and mass layoffs are anticipated to follow.
«‘Digger’ collapsed this weekend and the new management of the combined Paramount and Warner Bros., David Ellison and Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, will soon decide what kind of movies they want from WB,» wrote David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a box office newsletter. «Paramount does not have a recent history of making big, auteur-driven films like this — that strategy appears to be over and out.»
The film had been positioned similarly to Warner Bros.' «One Battle After Another» a year earlier — a politically charged, original story entrusted to a top filmmaker with a large budget. That bet paid off with $213.2 million worldwide and a best picture Academy Award. «Digger» will not follow the same path.
For Cruise, 64, the result marks a sharp departure from a decade dominated by the «Mission: Impossible» franchise and «Top Gun: Maverick,» which kept him a top action star well into his 60s. His last major box office disappointment was 2017's «The Mummy,» which still grossed $409.2 million worldwide against a $195 million budget. To sell «Digger,» Cruise pulled out all the stops, even granting his first lengthy magazine interview in years.
Warner Bros. has failed to push a single film past $100 million domestically this year, though its December release «Dune: Part III» is expected to clear that mark easily.
North American theaters were led instead by Amazon MGM's «Verity,» which debuted with $32.6 million and extended the box office streak for Colleen Hoover adaptations. Directed by Michael Showalter, the film stars Dakota Johnson as a writer hired to ghostwrite a book series by an incapacitated author played by Anne Hathaway.
Holdovers filled out the rest of the top tier. Sony Pictures' «Resident Evil,» Zach Cregger's video game adaptation, took second with $12.5 million in its third week. Paramount's «Heart of the Beast,» starring Brad Pitt as a retired veteran trekking through the Alaskan wilderness with his combat dog after a plane crash, followed with $11 million. A24's «Primetime,» Lance Oppenheim's drama featuring Robert Pattinson as «To Catch a Predator» host Chris Hansen, collected $8 million in its second weekend.
Further down the chart, «Forgotten Island» earned $7.2 million, while «Avengers: Endgame: Encore» slid to seventh with $4.4 million domestically and $14.4 million overseas. The Marvel re-release's second week nonetheless pushed «Endgame» just ahead of «Avatar» to reclaim the title of highest-grossing film ever, not accounting for inflation. «Endgame» now stands at $2.9255 billion, compared with «Avatar's» $2.9237 billion, the two having traded the crown in recent years through re-releases.
«Drishyam: The Conclusion» and «Practical Magic 2» each took in $2.7 million, and «Spider-Man: Brand New Day» rounded out the top ten with $2.5 million.
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