{"id":916108,"date":"2026-10-01T03:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916108\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T03:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T03:36:11","slug":"tom-cruises-digger-box-office-warner-bros-movie-to-bomb-in-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/916108\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise’s Digger Box Office: Warner Bros. Movie to Bomb in Opening"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis year\u2019s CinemaCon<\/a> included appearances from just about every A-lister you can name: Ryan Gosling<\/a>, Zendaya<\/a>, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, Dwayne Johnson, Sandra Bullock, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Michael B. Jordan and the list continues. Amid such commotion, the guest perhaps sparking the most conversation<\/a> was Tom Cruise<\/a>, who started to get the word out about Warner Bros.<\/a>\u2018 Digger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was significant excitement over the first-look footage revealing perhaps the world\u2019s biggest movie star transforming himself to become a portly, gray-haired jerk in an offbeat feature focusing on climate change. But questions persisted about the commercial prospects for a film that spotlights Cruise in a role that is dramatically different from the action-packed franchise fare that has lately been his bread and butter.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, it\u2019s becoming clear that general audiences might not quite know what to make of Digger, director Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s ambitious offering about Cruise\u2019s powerful entrepreneur having caused a natural disaster. The film\u2019s initial production budget was $125 million but has been reported to have risen to closer to $180 million, although a Warner Bros. spokesperson disputes this figure. Third-party tracking services predicted months ago that Digger could launch with a domestic opening weekend around $30 million, but the studio is now projecting a worrisome start in the range of $12 to $15 million in North America, with an additional $15 to $20 million internationally.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that Digger is such a big swing creatively and feels miles away from the star\u2019s typically safer IP plays, including his forthcoming Days of Thunder 2<\/a>, has garnered praise from onlookers. But this film adds to Cruise\u2019s tough stretch of late, with the underperformance at the box office<\/a> for last year\u2019s pricey<\/a> Mission: Impossible \u2014 The Final Reckoning, billed as the series\u2019 final installment, suggesting that there may have been too many trips to the well for that Paramount franchise. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAnne Hathaway<\/a> in Verity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlisha Wetherill\/Amazon MGM Studios<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso starring Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra H\u00fcller, Digger is certainly a film that would benefit from awards buzz, and the studio hopes that potential Oscar consideration could give it legs at the box office. Warner Bros.\u2019 notable 2025 titles reaped the benefit of great word of mouth and Academy Awards success, as best picture winner One Battle After Another boasted a 4.4-times multiple globally over its opening weekend \u2014 although it ultimately did not turn a profit, due to its hefty budget \u2014 while the impressive Sinners notched a 5.8-times multiple.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlas, this year has been far more challenging for Warner Bros. than 2025. The studio\u2019s most successful 2026 title has been Margot Robbie\u2019s Wuthering Heights, which topped out at $84 million domestically but reached a $241 million global cume on an $80 million budget. Warner Bros.\u2019 earlier disappointments included The Bride! and Supergirl, while the recent Practical Magic 2 has underperformed but is still in theaters. Waiting in the wings for later this year are Clayface, The Cat in the Hat and Dune: Part Three.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a very interesting weekend,\u201d Rentrak\u2019s Paul Dergarabedian tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cWhenever you have a star of the magnitude of Tom Cruise taking a huge swing for the fences and playing against type, the box office expectations shouldn\u2019t necessarily be centered around star power alone. By design, this is a very filmmaker-centric, envelope-pushing movie. It\u2019s not positioned as a mainstream blockbuster, but rather as an audacious filmmaking showcase for one of the world\u2019s biggest movie stars and filmmaker I\u00f1\u00e1rritu.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise (left) and Riz Ahmed in Warner Bros.\u2019 Digger.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tDigger has seen a polarizing response, holding a 50 percent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review for THR<\/a>, chief film critic David Rooney colorfully wrote that \u201cyou watch in excruciating weariness as it disappears up its own ass and then realize to your dismay that there\u2019s another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLikely winning the domestic box office is Amazon MGM Studios<\/a>\u2018 Verity, with director Michael Showalter\u2019s adaptation of Colleen Hoover<\/a>\u2018s novel starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson<\/a> and Josh Hartnett. The studio projects an opening in the range of $27 million to $30 million, with the project carrying a production budget of $40 million. Verity centers on struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) getting hired as a ghostwriter for acclaimed author Verity Crawford (Hathaway). <\/p>\n

\n\tVerity holds a 48 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from reviewers, with critic Richard Lawson writing for THR<\/a> that the movie \u201ccareens off a cliff, plummeting past so-bad-it\u2019s-good and crashing on the rocks of agonizingly dumb.\u201d The biggest opening for a Hoover adaptation remains the $50 million debut for Sony\u2019s embattled It Ends With Us, while Verity\u2019s projected launch will surpass that of 2025\u2019s Regretting You and 2026\u2019s Reminders of Him. <\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, the weekend is primed to spark plenty of debate over Digger\u2019s outcome, with the situation likely to be a bit more complex than might be initially assumed. As Dergarabedian adds, \u201cWe have to place our expectations around what this movie is and what it\u2019s trying to be, rather than what the name Tom Cruise might normally be expected to deliver at the box office \u2014 particularly when this is outside a known franchise like Mission: Impossible or a more traditional action role.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year\u2019s CinemaCon included appearances from just about every A-lister you can name: Ryan Gosling, Zendaya, Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[315909,338,12944,6471,49,48,361,207133,32869,41671,177359,75,9588,236745,4432],"class_list":["post-916108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu","tag-amazon-mgm-studios","tag-anne-hathaway","tag-box-office","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-cinemacon","tag-colleen-hoover","tag-dakota-johnson","tag-digger","tag-entertainment","tag-tom-cruise","tag-verity","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}