Digger Box Office Crash: Cruise Film Could Lose $245M

The Digger box office story just got uglier. Tom Cruise's environmental satire fell sixty percent in its second weekend, and according to Variety, Warner Bros. is now tracking toward a theatrical loss of two hundred forty-five million dollars.

A Second Weekend That Went Sideways

Digger opened last weekend to eight million dollars domestically and twenty million worldwide. This weekend it earned just three point two million from more than three thousand theaters, according to Deadline. That leaves its North American total at about fourteen million dollars and its global total at roughly thirty-five million.

The film ranked eighth on the domestic chart. Horror flick Other Mommy took the top spot with twenty-seven point five million dollars, and even a new Aaron Sorkin movie landed ahead of Cruise's big swing.

How the Math Got So Brutal

Variety reports that Warner Bros. green-lit Digger for one hundred twenty-five million dollars. After production ran over schedule, the budget swelled to somewhere between one hundred sixty and one hundred eighty million. The studio then spent another hundred million on marketing around the world, and those figures do not include awards campaigning.

Theaters keep about half of every ticket sold. That is why Variety says the movie needs three hundred fifty million dollars globally to break even, though a Warner Bros. spokesperson has argued the number is three hundred million. Either way, the film is expected to finish with only about fifty million worldwide.

There is another wrinkle. Cruise reportedly has a deal that pays him a percentage of revenue before the studio recoups its costs, so the road to any profit gets even longer.

Hollywood Rallies, Audiences Do Not

The movie, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, follows a wealthy oil tycoon whose company triggers a potential catastrophe. It is the kind of risky, star-driven original that studios rarely bankroll anymore, and reviews were harsh enough that Warner ran social ads telling moviegoers to decide for themselves.

Stars have been publicly defending it. Variety notes that Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro and Mandy Patinkin have all urged people to see it in theaters. So far, the second-weekend drop suggests the pleas are not moving the needle.

A Rough Year for Warner Bros.

Digger is the studio's last standalone release before its merger with Paramount, and it caps a bruising stretch. Variety points to earlier flops like The Bride and Supergirl, and says that not one Warner film this year has crossed one hundred million dollars domestically. The studio's former co-chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy left the company just as Digger hit screens.

Zooming out, the wider market is healthy. Deadline reports that the domestic box office has crossed eight billion dollars for the year, about nineteen percent ahead of this point in 2025, so audiences are clearly showing up for something. They just are not showing up for this.

Why Originals Are Such a Gamble

Studios have leaned on sequels, reboots and superhero brands for years because those titles come with a built-in audience. An original story with a huge price tag has to earn attention from scratch, and that means marketing money disappears quickly when the first reviews land poorly.

Look at the same weekend chart. Resident Evil, a franchise reboot, has now collected one hundred thirty-eight point five million dollars in North America, according to Deadline's figures, while Digger sits near fourteen. The Digger box office gap against familiar brands shows how much easier the safe bet remains, even when a star as famous as Cruise anchors the poster.

What Comes Next

Warner is hoping for a rebound in December, when Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Three arrives with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. Until then, the Digger box office collapse will be the cautionary tale every studio exec brings up when a pricey original gets pitched.

For Gen Z moviegoers, it is a reminder that a famous face and a prestige director are no longer enough on their own. Word of mouth moves fast on social feeds, and a movie that arrives with a bad reputation has almost no time to recover. Fans who want more original films in theaters may have to actually buy tickets before the cuts start landing.

You can keep up with more entertainment coverage in our movies section, where we track the next big releases and the biggest bombs alike.