UPDATE 3: Insiders now spell out Digger‘s role in the firings: why De Luca and Abdy didn’t survive the Skydance takeover.
UPDATE 2: Our WB sources call Digger the backbreaker, saying the merger couldn’t afford risks like it.
UPDATE: The bomb is already being pinned on the fired De Luca and Abdy. Our take on Skydance’s alarming first week, and why nobody says no to Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise’s Digger is bombing at the box office.
The Alejandro GonzĂĄlez Iñårritu satire is heading for an $8 million opening weekend, according to Deadline, Cruise’s worst debut in nearly twenty years. The last time he opened lower was 2007’s Lions for Lambs at $6.7 million, but technically counting inflation, this is lower.
Digger cost Warner Bros. and Legendary north of $160 million to produce, and the movie took in just $1.2 million in Thursday previews.
Audiences hit it with a C+ CinemaScore. Per Deadline, only Eyes Wide Shut (D-) and Magnolia (C-) have graded lower for Cruise.
The grade follows the rotten reviews, as the movie sits at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score is a better 71%.
Only The Coasts Showed Up
Deadline’s breakdown shows who actually bought tickets: mostly young men in big coastal cities.
The audience is 73% male and 60% between the ages of 18 and 34. Only 47% would definitely recommend the movie.
Nearly half the gross is coming from the coasts, with IMAX and premium large format screens doing the heavy lifting. The rest of the country is sitting this one out.
Iñårritu said he made the movie for Gen Z. Gen Z mostly stayed home.
Warner Bros. saw the trouble coming, releasing a “decide for yourself” ad this week that put the bad reviews right in the marketing.
Making matters worse, Amazon MGM opened the Colleen Hoover thriller Verity right on top of Digger, and it is heading for a $33.6 million weekend, the second-best opening for a Hoover adaptation. Verity got the same CinemaScore grade, and its audience showed up anyway.
Deadline notes political satire has a long history of flopping at the box office, pointing to Bob Roberts and The Informant!. The difference is those movies were cheap.
The flop also lands days before the Paramount merger closes October 6, capping a year that saw Warner Bros.’ summer box office drop 76%.
No One Wants To See Old Man Tom Cruise
Here is the problem nobody at Warner Bros. wants to say out loud: no one wants to see Tom Cruise as some old guy.
Cruise is an action star. That is the deal between him and the audience, and it has been for forty years.
Top Gun: Maverick made nearly $1.5 billion worldwide because it sold Cruise doing exactly what fans pay to see. Digger sells Cruise in old-age prosthetics with a fake gut and a shovel.
Critics called the performance the biggest swing of his career. Audiences are not buying tickets for it.
Fans will take the swing when it comes with a fighter jet or a motorcycle. They are not showing up to watch Cruise play a desperate old oil billionaire screaming about the end of the world.
The fix is already on the calendar.
Cruise heads back to the driver’s seat with Days of Thunder 2 in Summer 2028 alongside Anne Hathaway. Expect that opening weekend to look a whole lot different.
