Tom Cruise’s “Digger” heads for a $150–200 million loss: final figures of the failure confirmed

The final opening-weekend figures have been confirmed: “Digger” took only $8 million from 3,321 cinemas in North America and $12 million from 73 international markets — $20 million in total worldwide. It is the weakest opening for a Tom Cruise-led film in 19 years, since “Lions for Lambs” (2007). Warner Bros. had hoped for an $18–20 million opening, while box-office experts say a film with this budget would have needed an opening close to $40 million to stand a chance.

Now the maths is brutal: as Variety reports, the film risks losing $150–200 million from cinemas alone. The New York Times puts the loss at $125–150 million, while according to Deadline sources, the studio expects only $127 million in revenue against $275 million in global costs — and the film would need around $50 million more worldwide just to soften the blow.

The film was originally approved with a budget of $125 million, but the production cost climbed to $160–180 million, to which Variety adds around another $100 million for the global marketing campaign. Industry sources calculate that “Digger” would need around $350 million worldwide just to break even; a Warner Bros. spokesperson disputes that figure and claims $300 million would be enough.

The reception leaves little hope of a recovery: audiences gave the film a C+ grade on CinemaScore, while critics are split at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. The failure comes at the worst possible moment for Warner Bros. — it is the last major release of the era of studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, just as the merger with Paramount is expected to close on October 6.

With this result, “Digger” joins the list of historic Hollywood failures such as “John Carter” and “The Lone Ranger” — and becomes the biggest commercial failure of Cruise’s career, surpassing even 2017’s “The Mummy,” which cost Universal around $95 million.