Tom Cruise’s high-profile cinematic experiment, Digger, is facing an unexpectedly harsh reality at the North American box office. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and carrying a hefty $125 million production budget, the Warner Bros. release grossed a meager $3.3 million on its opening Friday, which included Thursday evening preview screenings. Industry tracking now projects the film to finish its domestic opening weekend with roughly $8 million across 3,300 theaters.
This performance falls significantly short of even the modest $12 million to $15 million opening projections previously estimated by Warner Bros. Executives and box office analysts alike are calling the launch a major disappointment for a star of Cruise’s magnitude. If estimates hold, Digger is on track to record the lowest opening weekend for a Tom Cruise vehicle since 2007, when the political war drama Lions for Lambs debuted with $6.7 million on a substantially smaller budget.
A Radical Transformation Meets a Polarizing Public Reception
Digger represents a massive creative gamble for Cruise, who famously stepped outside his comfort zone of high-octane action franchises to play a deeply unsympathetic role. Transforming himself physically with a balding head and heavy prosthetic weight, Cruise stars as an arrogant oil tycoon whose actions inadvertently trigger a cataclysmic natural disaster. The satirical drama also features an ensemble cast including Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, and Sandra Hüller.
Despite the pedigree of its filmmaker and cast, the film has failed to connect with the general public. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore handed Digger a dismal C+ grade. This marks one of the lowest audience scores of Cruise’s storied career, matching the exact mark received by Lions for Lambs nearly two decades ago.
Critics have been similarly divided, leaving the film with a lackluster 51 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Writing in his review for The Hollywood Reporter, chief film critic David Rooney delivered a scathing verdict, describing the project as "dead and buried." While studio optimists are holding out hope that potential awards season chatter might give the picture some long-term theatrical legs, initial word-of-mouth threatens to truncate its theatrical run.
Contextualizing the Pivot from Action Icon to Satirical Antihero
For much of the 21st century, audiences have come to associate Tom Cruise with gravity-defying stunts and blockbuster franchise vehicles like the Mission: Impossible series and Top Gun: Maverick. However, earlier eras of his career frequently saw the actor take daring, auteur-driven risks in films such as Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.
Industry analysts emphasize that expectations for Digger must be contextualized within the framework of idiosyncratic auteur cinema rather than standard summer popcorn fare. Rentrak box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian noted that stakeholders must evaluate the film based on what it is trying to achieve conceptually, rather than measuring it solely against the typical commercial gravity of the Tom Cruise brand name.
As Cruise prepares to pivot back to commercial territory with upcoming projects—including a planned sequel to his 1990 racing drama Days of Thunder—Digger serves as a stark reminder of the financial perils facing mid-budget and prestige adult dramas in the post-pandemic theatrical landscape.
A Turbulent Transition at Warner Bros.
The poor theatrical launch of Digger arrives at a particularly sensitive juncture for Warner Bros. Pictures, serving as one of the final wide-release theatrical titles distributed under the studio’s current independent corporate structure. An enormous $111 billion merger between Paramount and Skydance is scheduled to be finalized on October 6, fundamentally altering the studio’s operational future.
This corporate upheaval coincides with a leadership transition within the film division. News broke recently that Warner Bros. motion picture chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are stepping down from their posts, paving the way for incoming executives Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein to take the reins.
De Luca and Abdy presided over an uneven tenure. While 2025 delivered critical and commercial triumphs including acclaimed Oscar winners One Battle After Another and Sinners, the 2026 release slate has yielded a string of underperforming cinematic bets, culminating in the box office stumble of Digger.
Verity Leads a Competitive Autumn Box Office Weekend
While Digger struggles to find traction, Amazon MGM Studios is celebrating a commanding victory at the domestic box office with the suspense thriller Verity. Kick-starting the autumn "spooky season" release window, the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel brought in $15.1 million on Friday, inclusive of Thursday previews. The film is projected to capture the weekend crown with an estimated $38.6 million domestic debut across 3,510 locations.
Directed by Michael Showalter, Verity stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett. The narrative follows a struggling writer, Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson), who accepts a lucrative ghostwriting assignment to finish the remaining books of a successful author, Verity Crawford (Hathaway), only to uncover a chilling manuscript.
Despite its strong commercial trajectory, Verity mirrored Digger in receiving a polarizing C+ CinemaScore from opening-night audiences. Reviewers were also harsh, awarding the thriller a 34 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critic Richard Lawson branding it a "literary misfire" in his review for The Hollywood Reporter.
Holdovers and Other New Releases Round Out the Box Office
Elsewhere in the domestic marketplace, holdover titles continue to perform with varying degrees of stability.
In its third weekend of release, Sony’s Resident Evil video game reboot is maintaining a steady hold at No. 2. Directed by Zach Cregger and starring Austin Abrams, the horror-leaning property is projected to add another $12 million to its coffers, pushing its cumulative domestic gross to approximately $124.3 million.
Paramount’s survival thriller Heart of the Beast is pulling in roughly $11 million during its sophomore frame, bringing its cumulative domestic total to approximately $38 million. Directed by David Ayer, the film stars Brad Pitt as a stranded Special Forces operative navigating hostile wilderness alongside his military combat dog.
A24’s fact-based thriller Primetime, directed by Lance Oppenheim, is also holding firm in its second weekend. Anchored by a lead performance from Robert Pattinson as journalist Chris Hansen, the picture is tracking toward an $8 million weekend, which will elevate its total domestic cume to roughly $34 million—comfortably outperforming Digger at the weekend box office.
In the lower tier of wide releases, Lionsgate debuted Beware Boiúna to a muted response. The horror offering, directed by Mike P. Nelson—who has recently been tapped to helm the next installment in the Saw franchise—grossed roughly $500,000 from 1,121 theaters. Starring Kiana Madeira and Jessica Rothe, the giant-snake creature feature holds a 55 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
As the box office transitions deeper into the autumn calendar, the industry will look to next weekend’s high-profile arrivals, including the Jessica Chastain-led chiller Other Mommy and Aaron Sorkin’s political drama The Social Reckoning, to inject fresh momentum into multiplexes nationwide.
