Tom Cruise's 'Digger' bombs with $8m US opening, facing $150m loss

Highlights

• Digger, Alejandro G Iñárritu's satire starring Tom Cruise, opened to about $8m in North America and $20m worldwide, Cruise's lowest debut since 2007
• Deadline puts Warner Bros.' likely loss at around $148m, while Variety says it could reach $200m
• Critics are split, with roughly 51% on Rotten Tomatoes and a C+ from audiences, though even many negative reviews praise Cruise
• British Pakistani actor Riz Ahmed is the supporting performance reviewers keep singling out

From $126m to $8m

In May 2022, Top Gun: Maverick opened to $126m in North America and gave Tom Cruise the first $100m debut of his career. This weekend, Digger took about $8m, roughly a sixteenth of that figure, and finished fifth on the chart behind Amazon MGM's Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, which opened to around $32m.

Cruise, who also produced the film, was upbeat in public. He said he was "so proud of what we created," according to Deadline. The box office, though, was blunt. Digger added $12m from 74 international markets for a global start of $20m. In North America, it was the weakest Cruise opening since 2007's Lions for Lambs, which took $6.7m.

DiggerX/@SitoCinema

The numbers behind the $150m loss

Warner Bros. greenlit Digger at $125m, but Variety reports the price tag rose after the shoot ran long, and other estimates put the real cost between $150m and $180m. The studio then spent close to $100m on marketing. Deadline's tally of all costs, including home entertainment and television, comes to about $275m against roughly $127m in expected revenue, leaving a loss near $148m.

The break-even point is steep. Warner Bros. puts it at around $300m worldwide, and Variety says $350m. Theatres keep roughly half of every ticket sold, which shrinks the studio's share further. Analysts now doubt the film will reach $50m.

What the critics said

Digger reviews arrived on September 29 and split almost evenly. Digger sits at about 51% on Rotten Tomatoes from more than 250 critics. ScreenRant notes that ends a nine-year run without a "rotten" score for Cruise, and gives Iñárritu the first rotten rating of his directing career. Audiences on Rotten Tomatoes are warmer at 71%, but CinemaScore voters gave it a C+. According to Deadline, only Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia have graded lower for Cruise. Warner Bros. responded with "decide for yourself" adverts.

The film follows Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose drilling off Greenland cracks the Arctic ice and sets off an environmental disaster. John Goodman plays the US president called in to manage the fallout. About half an hour in, the story turns in a way critics have largely agreed not to spoil.

Opinion divides on nearly everything except Cruise, who works under heavy prosthetics and a receding grey hairline. Many of the negative reviews still single out his performance. RogerEbert.com felt the film "chokes on its own ambitions", while The Hollywood Reporter compared it with expensive recent misfires such as Babylon, Amsterdam and Megalopolis. NPR's Bob Mondello loved it, though he conceded that many viewers will hate it.

Iñárritu has said he made Digger for Gen Z, and Deadline reports that about 60% of ticket buyers were aged 18 to 34. More than 70% were men.

Tom Cruise and Riz AhmedX/@juggler972

Riz Ahmed, the film's bright spot

If one performance besides Cruise's has united reviewers, it is Riz Ahmed's. The British Pakistani actor, born in Wembley, plays Nirav Ganesh, a scientist and aide to the president who arrives to assess the crisis. The Hollywood Reporter's critic, otherwise unimpressed, saved a compliment for his work, and RogerEbert.com said Ahmed finds the comic register the film needed and too often lost.

It caps a strong year for him. Bait, the comedy series he created and stars in about a British Asian actor chasing a James Bond audition, holds a 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Ahmed won an Emmy for The Night Of in 2017, became the first Muslim nominated for the best actor Oscar for Sound of Metal, and later won an Oscar for the short film The Long Goodbye, shared with director Aneil Karia.

Riz Ahmed in the movie 'Digger'X/@juggler972

Cruise's long run

Cruise, 64, was a star long before the stunts. Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986) made him famous, and he went on to earn three acting Oscar nominations, for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia. The Mission: Impossible series, which began in 1996, turned him into one of the industry's most dependable action draws. War of the Worlds opened to about $65m in 2005, and Fallout (2018) carries a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score, the best of his career.

Top Gun: Maverick then did what none of his films had managed, opening above $100m and finishing with more than $718m in North America. His next outing, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, opened to about $78m over five days against hopes of $90m, a softer start than Paramount wanted. Lions for Lambs, the last Cruise film to open this weakly, cost $35m. Digger cost more than three times that.

A competitive Oscar has still eluded him. In November 2025 he received an honorary one at the Governors Awards, presented by Iñárritu, who was by then directing him in what became Digger. "This may be his first Oscar," Iñárritu told the room, adding that he expected it would not be the last.

A scene from Digger X/@JuviCinefilo

A rough exit for Warner Bros.

Digger is Warner Bros.' final release as a standalone studio before it merges with Paramount Skydance, the company that released Cruise's biggest hits. Studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy backed Cruise and Iñárritu after a similar expensive, auteur-led bet last year: Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another. That film opened to around $22m, went on to gross $213.2m worldwide and won best picture, yet Variety reports it still lost about $100m theatrically. Digger starts from a far lower base, with no comparable awards momentum so far.

For now the arithmetic is stark. A film that needs between $300m and $350m to break even is expected to finish below $50m, barely a sixth of the way there.