Tom Cruise’s Digger box office opening
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Tom Cruise’s Digger is heading for a brutal $8m box office opening after harsh reviews

Warner Bros. has hit back at the reviews

Suchismita Ghosh
30th September 2026, 16:16
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Okay, so Tom Cruise’s new film Digger hasn’t even been released to the public yet, but it already looks like it could seriously struggle at the box office. So, what’s going on?

The film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, was originally tracking towards an opening weekend of around $30 million. That then dropped to roughly $20 million, and now the latest projections suggest it could make just $8 million to $12 million in its opening weekend.

That is a pretty massive drop in expectations, especially for a film starring Tom Cruise. And the reviews haven’t exactly helped.

So, why might Digger struggle at the box office?

Tom Cruise’s Digger box office opening
Credit: Warner Bros.

Digger stars Tom Cruise as billionaire oil baron Digger Rockwell in an apocalyptic satire, and the film reportedly cost more than $135 million to make.

The review embargo has now lifted, and some critics have absolutely gone in on it. At the time of writing, the film had a 52 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney described the film as “so meta that you watch in excruciating weariness as it disappears up its own a** and then realise to your dismay that there’s another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure.”

The New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski gave it zero stars, while the Boston Globe reportedly called it “the worst movie of Tom Cruise’s career” and also gave it zero stars.

So, the reaction has been pretty brutal.

Warner Bros is leaning into the reaction

Rather than ignoring the reviews, Warner Bros is actually using the divided reaction in its marketing. The studio released a new video on X with the words “Decide for yourself”. It starts with a quote from a freelance movie influencer calling Digger “an ambitious film sure to polarise audiences”.

Then Cruise’s character responds, “You know what? F**k those people!”

The marketing has also had to keep quite a lot about the film secret. Digger reportedly has a third-act twist and two top-secret characters, so there is only so much the studio can show without giving things away.

There have also been musical theories about the film going around online, although those have reportedly been debunked.

At a Producers Guild of America Q&A on Sunday, one veteran producer described the reaction to the film’s box-office prospects by saying, “You could feel the air drop out of the room.”

The producer added, “It literally comes down to nobody read the script.”

The $135 million budget makes the numbers look even worse

Tom Cruise’s Digger box office opening
Credit: Warner Bros.

Boxoffice Pro’s Daniel Loria is projecting an opening weekend of $8 million to $12 million for Digger. That could leave it somewhere between second and fifth place, while Amazon MGM’s Verity, based on Colleen Hoover’s novel, is tracking towards an opening above $30 million.

Loria also said it would be unfair to compare Digger directly with Cruise’s huge action films. “Tom Cruise is headlining the marketing campaign, but it’s unfair to compare a film of this nature to his big action tentpoles,” he said.

“This is more in line with Iñárritu’s ‘Birdman’, irreverent and divisive for critics and audiences alike, and we expect a performance more in line with a specialty release than a crowd-pleaser.”

That comparison is worth noting because Birdman had a much smaller budget of around $18 million and went on to win Best Picture at the 2015 Oscars. Digger, meanwhile, reportedly cost more than $135 million.

One producer told Page Six, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the movie is an art house movie.”

Digger opens this weekend, so we’ll soon find out how much it actually makes.

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