Tom Cruise’s new film Digger has made a weak start in cinemas, and it now ranks among the worst box office results of his career. The black comedy, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, took $8 million in the US and $20 million worldwide over its opening weekend. For a film of its size, released by Warner Bros. Pictures with a major star at the top of the poster, that is a very small return.
Those figures leave Warner Bros. Pictures facing a heavy loss. Digger cost up to $180 million to make, and the studio spent a further $100 million on marketing. On those numbers the film needs about $300 million in ticket sales just to break even. Euronews estimates that it is on course to lose between $150 million and $200 million, a scale of loss it compared with that of John Carter.
The project was an unusual gamble from the start: an original, big-budget comedy built around one of the biggest stars in the business and a director whose earlier films include Birdman, The Revenant and Bardo. On paper, the pairing looked like an awards contender. Cruise plays an oil tycoon whose company sets off an environmental disaster, and the film wraps its eco-satire in self-aware jokes about cinema itself. That approach appears to have put audiences off. Euronews’ own critic had already called it both the boldest film of 2026 and the year’s wildest misfire.
The timing is poor for Warner Bros. The studio has already taken big losses this year on The Bride and Supergirl, neither of which passed $100 million in the US. Digger also arrives as Paramount Skydance’s contested takeover of the parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is due to close next week. A US district court has approved the $110 billion deal, so the flop lands just as the studio changes hands.
Warner Bros. is now relying on December’s Dune: Part Three to rescue its year. That film is projected to open to between $200 million and $230 million worldwide, ten times what Digger managed in its first weekend. A box office result is not a verdict on a film’s quality, but for Cruise and Iñárritu the opening weekend leaves Digger far from its $300 million target, with little sign that later weekends will close the gap.
