Tom Cruise’s $135 Million Movie Just Opened to $8 Million, and the Director Says He Saw It Coming

For four decades, Tom Cruise has been the closest thing Hollywood has to a sure thing. Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick, Jerry Maguire: the man prints money. So when a new Tom Cruise movie opens on 3,300 screens and cannot crack eight figures, you notice.

That is exactly what happened this past weekend with Digger, Cruise’s satirical climate comedy from two-time Oscar winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The film opened to roughly $8 million domestically and about $20 million worldwide, against a reported production budget somewhere between $125 million and $180 million. It is Cruise’s weakest opening in 19 years, and some industry watchers say it could rank among the biggest bombs in Hollywood history.

And the director? He is not apologizing. In fact, he says the backlash is kind of the point.

The Weekend From Hell, by the Numbers

Let us be blunt about how bad this is, because the context matters. Eight million dollars is not just low, it is historically low for a star of this size.

• $8 million: domestic opening weekend, per multiple reports. Cruise’s worst wide-release debut since 2007’s Lions for Lambs, which opened to $6.7 million.
• ~$20 million: worldwide total from the opening weekend, on a film that reportedly cost $135 million or more to make.
• $150 million: how much some reports estimate Warner Bros. could ultimately lose on the film once marketing is factored in.
• 3,300: the number of North American theaters showing it. This was not a limited art-house rollout. It was a full wide release.
• Fourth place (or worse): it trailed Verity, the Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson drama that opened to $33 million, along with Resident Evil and Heart of the Beast.

For perspective, even Rock of Ages, the 2012 musical that has become shorthand for a Cruise misfire, managed $12 million in its opening frame. And Joker: Folie à Deux, Warner Bros.’ last prestige tentpole disaster, is now being used as the favorable comparison. That is how far the bar has moved.

The Director Is Not Backing Down

Here is where the story gets interesting. Most directors go quiet when their $135 million movie face-plants. Alejandro G. Iñárritu went to The New York Times and basically shrugged.

Iñárritu said he welcomes the backlash, telling the Times he would prefer that to a lukewarm reception. He conceded the movie is not perfect, defended his approach by saying he likes taking risks, and described Digger as deliberately confrontational: a provoking film meant to start a conversation, not to serve comfort food.

As he put it: “This is not like an ice cream. So, yeah, we expected that, to be honest.”

He also gave the film its best one-line defense, calling it “a disaster movie, but the disaster is us.” Cruise plays a billionaire oil tycoon racing to prove he can save humanity from a catastrophe he caused, and Iñárritu clearly thinks the mirror the movie holds up is worth the fight it is picking.

There is something almost admirable about the defiance. There is also the small matter of a nine-figure hole in Warner Bros.’ balance sheet. Those two things can both be true.

So Much for the Oscar Campaign

This one probably stings the most. Digger was built, from day one, to be Cruise’s Oscar play. He has never won a competitive Academy Award, despite four nominations across four decades, and this film paired him with a director who had already won two Best Director trophies. The plan was obvious: make something strange, serious, and un-Cruise-like, and finally get him over the finish line.

Instead, according to Page Six, Cruise’s Oscar chances have plummeted since the reviews landed. The critical reception has been, in a word, savage:

• 51% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics (277 reviews counted by Radio Times), against 71% from audiences.
• 46/100 on Metacritic, with a 66/100 user score.
• C+ CinemaScore, which is the kind of grade that kills word of mouth dead.
• The New York Post’s critic gave it zero out of four stars, calling it a “laugh-free turd” that would send audiences “stampeding out.”

The film’s consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads like a shrug: a stylized satire whose audacious design proves too mannered for some of the laughs to land. When the kindest summary of your movie is “bold swing that misses as often as it strikes gold,” your awards campaign is in trouble.

For what it is worth, Cruise did get an honorary Oscar at the 16th Governors Awards last November. So the Academy has, technically, noticed him. Just not for Digger.

The One Stat That Refuses to Cooperate

Here is the weird twist in this whole story: audiences kind of like it. That 71% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is no masterpiece, but it is a full 20 points above the critics’ verdict, and the Radio Times gave it four stars, calling it “a fascinating thought experiment” that “will annoy as many people as it delights.”

Cruise himself does not seem rattled. Over the weekend he posted on Instagram that the film was in theaters, writing that he was “so honored” to have made it with such talented artists, that the experience was “truly unforgettable,” and that he is “so proud of what we created.”

Read that however you want. Publicly, he is standing by his director and his movie. Privately, his team has to be doing math right now that would make an accountant cry. Even Cruise’s last two Mission: Impossible films underperformed relative to their budgets, which means Digger is now the third swing in a row that did not land. The “sure thing” narrative is officially under review.

What Cruise Does Next

The answer, tellingly, is speed. Cruise is expected to return to his comfort zone soon: a sequel to Days of Thunder, the 1990 racing film, is reportedly set to begin production. After spending years trying to be taken seriously by the arthouse crowd, he is going back to the thing that made him the biggest movie star on the planet: fast cars, big action, and rooms full of people who just want to be entertained.

Iñárritu will keep provoking. Cruise will keep running. And Hollywood will keep arguing about whether a movie that lost $150 million can still be called a work of art.

If you want the full picture of the industry shakeup this film is now tangled up in, our coverage of the Skydance merger explains the new Hollywood power structure, and for the lighter side of the industry, HBO’s Gilded Age season 4 premiere date just dropped. For everything else happening in show business this week, check out our Entertainment section.