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Rebecca Rubin
Senior Film and Media Reporter
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©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection In “Digger,” Tom Cruise portrays a powerful oil tycoon who is bracing for an ecological disaster of epic proportions. But nothing could have prepared him for the catastrophe that’s unfolding at the box office, where “Digger” has collapsed with an embarrassing $8 million from 3,321 North American theaters. Rivals believe the figure will be closer to $7.5 million when the final numbers are tallied on Monday.
With a production budget of $160 to $180 million, “Digger” will wind up as not just one of the biggest bombs of the year but potentially of all time. Warner Bros. was hoping the combination of Tom Cruise, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and director Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose critical and commercial wins include “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” would at least propel initial grosses to $18 million to $20 million. And even those ticket sales would have been financially disastrous for the mega-budgeted satirical film. Box office experts say a movie of this size would have needed a debut near $40 million to justify its price tag. Those projections were revised down (and revised down again) after a deluge of bad buzz. The R-rated satire opened in fifth place behind another newcomer, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson’s psychological thriller “Verity,” and three holdovers, including “Resident Evil” and “Heart of the Beast.”
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