Digger is poised to be one of the biggest box-office flops of the year

Despite a major star’s return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing, Digger looks set to become one of the biggest box-office disasters of the year.

According to Variety, the dark comedy from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise saw its costs balloon from an original budget of $125 million US to $160-180 million — putting a break-even return around $350 million US when including its marketing spend. (Warner Bros. pushed back on this, telling Variety their actual break-even point is around $300 million US).

It earned only $1.2 million US in previews. And according to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner predicts the film will only earn $12-15 million US domestically this weekend: a dismal opening for the studio in a year already littered with poor performers. Following their films The Bride!, Supergirl, The End of Oak Street and Practical Magic 2 all releasing to apparent losses, that string of failures will possibly be capped by one of Warner Bros.’s biggest flops of the decade.

A bizarre story about an oil tycoon tasked with saving the world from a catastrophe his drilling caused, Digger was always a risk. The R-rated black comedy opted to skip the festival circuit entirely — instead operating on the hopes that strong word of mouth and big-name buzz would convince audiences to get off the couch and head to theatres.

The strategy of avoiding early critical negativity and gunning straight for Cruise fans made a sort of sense: it represents the actor’s first non-franchise film since 2017’s Barry Seal biopic American Made.

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CBC film critic Jackson Weaver is clear: Digger is a surreal, absurd, winding, tongue-in-cheek movie about an evil oil tycoon and the cataclysmic climate disaster that he creates. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s dark comedy has polarized critics with some calling it brave while while others call it a baffling, pretentious mess.

And it is directed by Iñárritu: the auteur whose Birdman won best picture and director at the Oscars, while the following year’s The Revenant snagged Leonardo DiCaprio his long-awaited best actor award along with another director win for Iñárritu. But as its earliest critical responses started to release last month, a wave of negative press threatened to sink those chances. 

It has been called “the worst movie of Tom Cruise’s career” by the Boston Globe, “a metafictional morass” from RogerEbert.com and “a lumbering white elephant of a movie that it almost makes you sorry for everyone involved” by the New York Times. In response to the negative reviews, the film’s producers released an ad positioning Cruise’s character cursing out critics.

But largely, even critics who loved the film — such as this writer — widely predicted that Digger would be too experimental and odd to ever hope to recoup its budget.

That puts Warner Bros. in a potentially difficult position; after a strong, awards-leading 2025 (including hits like Sinners, Weapons and One Battle After Another) their 2026 slate only offers modest success. Wuthering Heights, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and Evil Dead Burn did pull off positive numbers, though not a single Warner movie has earned above $100 million US domestically this year. 

At the most extreme estimates, Digger‘s failure could put it into the arena with 2026’s other big flops: Melania, which earned roughly $16 million US off a reported $40 million budget, and the Anthony Mackie-led Desert Warrior, which made less than $1 million US off its reported $150 million US budget, is still the biggest failure of the year.

Digger could still prove valuable for Warner Bros. Despite its dismal expected performance, there is still speculation on whether Cruise could be pushed to Academy Awards success in the end. And given Cruise films’ strong brand recognition, it could prove to be popular on streaming. 

But the failure comes as the last release before Warner Bros. is fully acquired by Paramount on Tuesday. Digger‘s failure also came the same weekend as the Hollywood Reporter suggested that Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy — Warner’s famously director-friendly film chiefs — would not continue with the company after the merger.

Digger taking bold, thematic risks — and being rewarded with such poor box office returns — could bode poorly for the new conglomerate’s artistic choices.