Final Pre-Merger Warner Bros. Movie Sets Disastrous Box Office Debut

Published Oct 3, 2026, 11:23 AM EDT

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

Digger isn't striking pay dirt at the box office.

The new dark comedy movie, which was directed by Oscar winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant), stars Tom Cruise in the title role as an oil baron who accidentally triggers a potentially apocalyptic environmental catastrophe. The movie marks the final release from Warner Bros. Discovery prior to the October 6 closure of their proposed - and highly contested - merger with Paramount Skydance. Before the merging process kicked off in February, WBD had a string of 2025 hits, including A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Weapons, F1, and Superman. 2026 has been more brutal, peppered with flops, including The Bride! and Supergirl.

The supporting cast of Digger also includes Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg, and John Goodman.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday morning, Digger is projected to earn a 3-day debut of $8 million at the domestic box office. This marks the worst debut for a Tom Cruise movie in 19 years, since 2007's Lions for Lambs premiered with a 3-day domestic haul of $6.7 million. The 2007 movie was ultimately a disappointment, grossing $64.8 million against a reported $35 million budget. Movies often need to earn back two and a half times their budgets in theaters, which could have placed the movie's estimated break-even point as high as $87.5 million.

2026's Digger is an even more expensive prospect, coming as it does with an enormous reported budget of between $160 and $180 million. This could mean that its estimated break-even point is somewhere between $400 and $450 million. Only eleven movies have earned more than $400 million worldwide this year so far. While one of them - the low-budget horror hit Obsession - debuted with $17.2 million, it had unprecedented week-on-week holds, becoming the first movie since 1982's E.T. to earn more than the previous weekend for three consecutive weekends.

Meanwhile, every other Hollywood movie in the Top 10 debuted with more than $35 million at the domestic box office, which is more than triple Digger's current projections. Below, see a breakdown of the overall box office performance of other 2026 releases with A-list talent attached that debuted between $5 and $15 million in domestic theaters:

Title	Domestic Debut	Worldwide Box Office
The Drama	$14.4 million	$134.7 million
Crime 101	$14.2 million	$72.9 million
Mercy	$10.8 million	$54.7 million
The Bride!	$7 million	$23.9 million
Shelter	$5.5 million	$56.2 million

If Digger matches the movie on the chart with the best multiplier (the Jason Statham action movie Shelter, which earned 10.2 times its domestic debut worldwide), it could ultimately earn roughly $82 million by the end of its run. However, Shelter reviews were stronger, earning it a Fresh score of 62% from critics on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer with an even better audience score of 97%.

Digger reviews have earned it a firmly Rotten 51% on the Tomatometer and a Popcornmeter score of 71%. This puts it more in the realm of The Bride! (which earned 57% and 69% respectively), which had a multiplier of just 3.4. That multiplier would see the Iñárritu movie earning less than $28 million by the end of its run.

While it seems likely that Digger will be seeing Warner Bros. Discovery closing out its brief tenure on a major low (Warner Bros. and Discovery completed their own recent merger in April 2022), the company has already scheduled multiple upcoming movies that were developed pre-merger which have strong potential to do better. This includes Dune: Part Three (December 18, 2026), A Minecraft Movie Squared (July 23, 2027), The Conjuring: First Communion (September 10, 2027), The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (December 17, 2027), and The Batman: Part II (February 18, 2028).

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