Why Did Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ Hit Rock Bottom at the Box Office?

After The Hollywood Reporter declared Sunday that Tom Cruise‘s big-budget Digger had been “buried at the box office,” this reporter received an email from a reader earnestly wondering how things went so wrong.

“I read your article, and I’m curious about WHY it got buried,” the individual wrote. “I’ve liked most of the Tom Cruise movies. I don’t have A/C at home, and I’d welcome the chance to spend a few hours in a cool theater! But until Sunday night, I simply hadn’t heard about it. Why weren’t my friends talking about it?”

Indeed, Digger bottoming out at the box office has led to plenty of questions, not just from casual Cruise supporters but industry insiders as well. Sources tell THR that there is a pervasive sense of sadness among the Warner Bros. team about director Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s film having drastically failed to find an audience. THR has heard from those on the lot who enjoyed Digger so much that they saw it multiple times and were hoping that general audiences would give it a chance as well.

Alas, Digger goes down as an ambitious effort that will come nowhere close to breaking even. After third-party tracking suggested weeks ago that it could open with $30 million domestically, the satirical black comedy grossed an anemic $8 million while adding just $12 million from 73 international markets. Centering on Cruise’s titular oil tycoon having caused a natural disaster, Digger’s initial production budget was $125 million but has been reported to have climbed closer to $180 million, although a Warners spokesperson disputed this figure. The studio spent around $100 million on marketing for the project that also starred Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller.

Digger was the talk of CinemaCon in April, with palpable excitement and cautious optimism from attendees surrounding Cruise — known to take chances with character-driven films earlier in his career before setting his sights on action-packed tentpoles — disappearing into the part of a balding, portly, unlikable billionaire. As Iñárritu and Cruise took the CinemaCon stage to debut the movie’s first footage, the filmmaker teased the film as a “high-wire act,” which sadly proved rather prescient, given its eventual box office plummet.

“Tom Cruise has always been a risk taker,” Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian tells THR. “The challenge is that having Cruise as the star doesn’t automatically make a film a mainstream blockbuster. With a lower budget and a more limited release, the performance of Digger would have been perceived differently. But given the context within the framework of how this film was released and the reported budget, it was obviously put under a spotlight, comparing it to the star’s past hits.”

It’s hard to assess whether a tweaked strategy would have made much of a difference for Digger. Following in the footsteps of Warner Bros.’ 2025 release One Battle After Another — which has been celebrated for winning the best picture Oscar, despite its hefty budget meaning it didn’t turn a profit — Digger skipped a splashy festival premiere. This led to debate surrounding whether Warner Bros. felt burned that critics lambasted its Joker: Folie à Deux after the high-profile sequel and eventual flop debuted in Venice. That said, a festival launch might not have added significant sheen to a film that ultimately earned a C+ CinemaScore and holds a 51 percent approval from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes, with THR chief film critic David Rooney dubbing it “dead and buried.”

Interest in the movie crumbled in the 10 days leading up to its release, and with the writing on the wall, the film’s marketing pivoted to almost relishing the divisive nature of the response. One promotional video posted to social media highlighted the negative responses as Cruise’s character declared, “Fuck those people,” while another ad suggested that European audiences were more appreciative of the film than Americans (although Digger’s international gross appears to expose that claim as cold comfort).

“Tom Cruise remains one of the most influential actors and theatrical champions of all time, and he’s certainly earned the right to take this type of creative swing,” notes Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder Shawn Robbins. “You never know how the story around certain movies will unfold, so perhaps the ‘decide for yourself’ marketing campaign goes on to have some meaning with viewers over time.”

This represents quite the low note in Warner Bros.’ swan song as a stand-alone studio, as its merger with Paramount Skydance is expected to be finalized in the coming days. Along with titles like this year’s The Bride!, Digger was not the only ambitious project from departing Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy that struggled to land with audiences. Of course, one’s Hollywood standing can change rapidly, and last year was a much different story, thanks to acclaimed Oscar-winning originals like One Battle, Sinners and Weapons.

As for Cruise’s next moves, audiences can expect him to eschew bids for now for that elusive first competitive Oscar and return to IP-driven vehicles that involve the star, well, driving fast-moving vehicles. He and co-star Anne Hathaway — whose thriller Verity far surpassed Digger in ticket sales this weekend — will soon begin filming Paramount’s Days of Thunder 2 for director Jonathan Levine, while Paramount continues to tease a follow-up to the 2022 smash hit Top Gun: Maverick. Digger gives Cruise his second consecutive money-losing effort following Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, given the massive budget for last year’s pricey Paramount sequel.

One thing that remains certain is that Cruise, among the industry’s most ardent supporters of the theatrical experience, is acutely aware of the magnitude of Digger’s limited return on investment. A few years back, filmmaker Zack Snyder told THR that in March of 2008, he first learned of 300′s impressive box office from a Sunday morning congratulatory call from Cruise himself, who was not involved in the historical epic but simply jazzed to observe its success. Clearly, box office figures mean a lot to Cruise, and it’s safe to say that he has given plenty of thought to these latest results and where his high-flying path will take him next.

“Digger has provided a reality check on how the business works in today’s unpredictable movie marketplace environment,” adds Dergarabedian. “There are always lessons to be learned when a film like Digger doesn’t connect with audiences as expected, but hopefully this doesn’t stop Cruise from taking chances on more challenging material. He still has many years to go in his career to move between mainstream action films and true originals.”