Tom Cruise has made a career of being the one star who can still open a movie. "Digger" is the exception.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's dark climate satire, with Cruise as an aging oil magnate named Digger Rockwell, opened to about $8 million in the US on October 2. Warner Bros. had hoped for $18 million to $20 million. It was the lowest opening for a Cruise-led film in 19 years. It fell 60% the next weekend, and theaters are already dropping it.
It has made about $35 million worldwide. It cost a reported $125 million to $180 million to make, plus around $100 million to market. Estimates of the loss run from $150 million (IndieWire) to $245 million (Variety). By any of those numbers, it is the biggest bomb of Cruise's career.
Ben Affleck's defense
Most of the reaction has been gleeful. Ben Affleck has had enough of it.
On Josh Horowitz's "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, he called the pile-on "a little bit like the high-school bullying thing, with people who hadn't even seen movies."
"Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it's the most exciting thing to happen," he said. "If you punish movies that take risks, guess what you're going to get? A bunch of shitty, homogenized movies."
And: "You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing, and that means you're going to sometimes look bad."
Affleck knows the feeling. He compared it to the mid-2000s, when public opinion turned on him as a movie star.
He is not alone. Anne Hathaway, whose "Verity" beat "Digger" on its opening weekend, gave it 10 out of 10 on Letterboxd.
Was it a big swing or a bad bet?
Both arguments have something to them.
The case for Affleck: "Digger" is exactly the kind of film studios say they want more of. It is an original, strange, adult movie from an Oscar-winning director, not a sequel or a superhero film. Reviews were split, not savage: about 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. If every original film at this scale is judged only by its opening weekend, fewer will get made.
The case against: the problem was less the swing than the price. A dark satire about climate and an oil baron is a hard sell at any budget. At up to $180 million plus marketing, it needed around $300 million to $350 million worldwide to break even. That is blockbuster money for a film that was never built to be a blockbuster.
Box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian put it plainly to Fox News: "There are lessons to be learned from 'Digger,' particularly around budget, positioning and expectations." It "was always a much tougher commercial proposition."
The timing is the real story
"Digger" was Warner Bros.' last release as an independent studio. Four days after it opened, Paramount Skydance closed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The new owner, Skydance, is carrying about $80 billion in debt and has promised more than $6 billion in savings. The people about to decide which risky, expensive, original films get made at Warner Bros. are the same people who need to find that money.
Affleck's warning is about the whole industry. But "Digger" landed on the desk of a company that has every reason to listen to the other side of the argument.
Is Cruise in trouble?
Probably not. "One movie doesn't erase decades of success," Dergarabedian said. "Every studio wants to be in the Tom Cruise business."
What "Digger" shows is that Cruise's pull is strongest when he is doing what audiences expect from him. The question is whether he, or any studio, will try something this different at this price again.
Published Saturday, October 17, 2026. Box office figures are as reported; budget and loss estimates vary widely between outlets and are not confirmed by Warner Bros.
