Tom Cruise will not be jumping on any couches this weekend.
This as the star of blockbusters Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible posts his lowest opening in 19 years, that being the reported $160 million net-priced Digger, which didn’t find an audience with an $8 million domestic debut, a $20M global start and a C+ CinemaScore.
Myriad sources tell us Digger stands to lose around $150M, and that’s if it’s lucky to get to a global box office of $50M. Post-pandemic, pricey fall disasters such as last year’s Dwayne Johnson-starring The Smashing Machine and the 2022 Margot Robbie-Christian Bale-John David Washington absurdist period title Amsterdam had similar single-digit domestic openings, and finaled lower with respective global grosses of $21.1M and $31.2M, Both had respectively smaller budgets of $50M and $80M.
The timing of Digger‘s bombing is Shakespearian, coming at the most stinging moment when Skydance co-CEO (né Paramount CEO) David Ellison refused to honor Warner Bros Motion Picture chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy’s contracts and bring them into the fold. This after Warner’s milestone 2025 global gross of $4.3 billion, the best since 2019, and 11 Oscar wins. The new ParaBros is inheriting several lucrative IP assets from the Burbank lot shepherded by De Luca and Abdy — Ocean’s Eleven, Gremlins, Gladys, Minecraft 2 and more going forward, 38 features overall, dated into 2029. In 2027, the Paramount-Warners Bros slate will overdeliver the state AG’s demands of 30 films annually with 36 titles.
How did Warners pick up a shovel and break ground on a filibuster-y, dialogue-driven satire about the MAGA era that follows an oil tycoon whose latest ice cap project literally misfires, causing a global environmental disaster? (Those who’ve seen Digger know there’s a meta twist.)
Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu first developed what would become Digger at Netflix (the project had a different title), where he made the 2 hour, 39 minute stream-of-consciousness art movie Bardo. At the time, Leonardo DiCaprio was eyeing the project; however, after the streamer made the very similar $75M Adam McKay-directed environmental satire Don’t Look Up, Iñárritu took the project to his Revenant producer Mary Parent at Legendary. There, Digger was developed with Cruise in mind.
L-R: Emmanuel Lubezki, Pamela Abdy, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Tom Cruise, Mary Parent, Andy Sherman and Michael De Luca attend the ‘Digger’ premiere on Sept. 22, 2026 in London
Joe Maher/Getty Images
Cut to 2024. Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav is hot for teacher to land Cruise post-Top Gun: Maverick, and dispatches De Luca and Abdy to make a non-exclusive originals and franchise deal with the global star. The first project under the pact? Digger. Abdy had worked with Iñárritu on his $17M-priced Oscar-winning Birdman and the $135M-budgeted DiCaprio western The Revenant while she was Production President at New Regency from 2013-2016. De Luca worked with Cruise when the former was President and COO of New Line on the much thriftier priced Magnolia, from Paul Thomas Anderson, which landed the star his third Oscar nomination (in Supporting Actor) at the time.
L-R: Tom Cruise and Jason Robards in ‘Magnolia’
De Luca and Abdy, we hear, ran Digger through their analytical comps system. The combo of Cruise and Iñárritu justified a $125M production greenligiht. Legendary’s development costs were bought out by Warners, hence the reason why the production company isn’t co-financing ala other Warner projects like Dune and the Godzilla Kong movies. The cost with an extended schedule rose to around a net $160M shoot at Leavesden in the UK with tax credits. Many sources have argued that the cost was substantially higher before the pic’s near-$100M global theatrical marketing spend.
At the Los Angeles Westwood premiere, Cruise exclaimed to De Luca and Abdy, “You didn’t even take a breath when we brought you this film. I don’t even think you turned the page on it. You’re just like — you’re in.”
Which raises the question, exactly which studio executive says “no” to Cruise?
With De Luca and Abdy painted by some as spendthrift in their loss of the top motion picture jobs at the new Skydance, let that executive who has said “no” to Cruise on his productions cast the first stone.
Skydance was heavily involved in the co-financing of lengthy Cruise shoots Top Gun: Maverick (net $177M) and the last two Mission: Impossible movies, Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning, which carried an exorbitant combined cost between $591M and $691M. Again, those latter two budgets were driven up partly due to Covid stops, but also due to Cruise’s well known fastidiousness and drive for perfection.
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“The problem is that there’s no one in Cruise’s camp to tell him ‘no,’ and what might not work,” says one hig- level source who was involved with the Mission movies. “It used to be his producing partner Paula Wagner.”
“Everyone knows he likes to direct on the set,” adds another. “I don’t know how that worked out with Alejandro because he doesn’t take direction from anyone.”
De Luca and Abdy did tell Cruise “no,” and that’s when they passed on the actor’s project Deeper, with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman, a supernatural underwater thriller that carried a $270M budget ask and no script at the time; the project remains in deep development at Universal. De Luca and Abdy also passed on making Michael Mann’s Heat 2, the sequel to a lucrative title in the Warner library as the budget for that movie climbed to $160M, which was cheap enough for $2.7 trillion conglomerate Amazon to make.
The first weekend of October — a hot frame where Warners launched the first Joker to a final gross of $1.07B worldwide and A Star Is Born to $440M worldwide, was chosen as Digger’s release date. Marketing began to tease the movie as the role that we’ve never seen Cruise in: an old, crusty, balding Texan waving a shovel heroically in an apartment. Toe-dip screenings with illuminati critics showed great promise. We hear there were two test screenings: the first, with a half-hour longer edit, didn’t go so well, but a second test with a half-hour shorter edit (approaching the pic’s current 2 hour, 9 minute running time) went much better. Insurance covered a reshoot involving Cruise’s makeup following the first test screening. Cruise began pre-production on the movie while doing press for Final Reckoning last year.
While Cruise worked it in regards to opening the movie including a stop at April’s CinemaCon, a UK world premiere with the Royals, Q&As and even an appearance on Jennifer Hudson, his availability to the press wasn’t 100%. Read, trades were barred from red-carpet appearances despite Cruise’s constant availably to them on the last two Mission: Impossible pics and several red carpets for Top Gun: Maverick.
In July, L.A.-based press was invited to the Warners Burbank lot for the first trailer drop. Mobile phones were pulled and media questions weren’t taken as they watched Cruise onstage with a Gen Z podcaster who gushed over the star’s achievements and the promises of Digger. Later on, Cruise met and took a professional photo with each reporter in the room in addition to a massive group photo outside the Steve J. Ross Theater on the Burbank lot.
Walking away, anecdotally, those in the room had their suspicions about Cruise in a Doctor Strangelove-like movie. “When I see Tom Cruise, I want to see him as the Tom Cruise I know, not with all this makeup,” exclaimed one O.G. entertainment journalist.
Digger initially came on NRG tracking three weeks ago with an opening range of $17M-$23M. Those close to the movie say they were shocked by the polarizing reviews, which stand at 51% Rotten. Bad word set in not just here but around the world, a 180 to the vibrant critical reaction and audience reception on One Battle After Another (94% certified fresh, A CinemaScore).
Positive online buzz fell on Digger in RelishMix metrics from an 8.1 out of 10 on September 15, to a 6.4 before opening. Said the social analytics corp in its weekly report: “Chatter has been mixed-negative for Digger. There’s skepticism with viewers who love the idea of Cruise, but side-eye the execution: ‘Impressive that after a nearly three-minute long trailer, I still don’t really know what this movie’s about.’ The sharpest criticism isn’t about hating the movie, it’s about distrust, suspicion that the ‘aging gracefully’ narrative is a PR construct. Comments needle at the film’s tonal identity, wondering if it’s satire or self-parody, ‘For me this looked funny at first viewing. Second time it just looks cynical and a bad Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove rip-off. Hope my first take is right.’ Plus, ‘Why does this look like Tropic Thunder cosplay’ along with ‘I understand even less about this movie after the full trailer than I did after the teaser.’ And, there are grumbles about the promo montage in the ‘Tom Cruise Retrospective’ trailer feeling like a premature Oscars reel.”
Iñárritu said he made the movie as a love letter to the younger generation, despite it starring a bunch of right wing-like crusty old dudes. Ironically, the 18-34 demo showed up at 60% majority this weekend, though clearly not enough of them.
Those close to Cruise have argued that even with Digger bombing, every time he has a new theatrical release it raises the whole value and churn of his library again; his box office worth standing at $14B+ across 53 titles. A similar excuse was given by Paramount insiders when Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning didn’t hit an enormous box office number: The movie won’t profit in its first go-round, rather its nth cycle.
Breaking down the $148M estimated loss on Digger, this is realized per sources based on $127M in total revenues — meaning theatrical rentals, airline monies, domestic home streaming, PVOD, international TV and global costs of $275M, and that’s not just worldwide P&A near $100M but also global home and TV costs. This is also figuring that Warners unleashes Digger on Premium VOD soon and does a decent number relative to the box office because people are curious.
Yes, at the end of the day, Digger is Birdman all over again, and should have been positioned as an awards arthouse play. Such originality comes at substantially less than $50M production costs. But again, Digger stars Cruise at full freight.
What would De Luca and Abdy’s fates had been at the new Skydance had the merger closed after Dune: Part Three?
Those in Ellison’s ears have whispered about the duo’s audacious bets, when the box office reality is that these titles (six-time Oscar winner Anderson’s highest-grossing movie One Battle After Another, four-time Oscar winner and $372M-grossing Sinners, and the bomb The Bride) were a small part of a very commercial run for the two that included the near billion-dollar-grossing A Minecraft Movie, the highest-grossing Final Destination, Conjuring and Beetlejuce movies of all time, the launch of another auteur in Zach Cregger’s Weapons, half of Twisters, upcoming holiday family title The Cat in the Hat and the hopeful billion-dollar-grossing Dune: Part Three and much more to come.
Exclaimed one rival distribution exec who has never worked with De Luca and Abdy, “When Mike and Pam hit it out of the park, they hit it out the park.”
Warner Bros didn’t return request for comment.