Tom Cruise’s “Digger” risks the biggest loss of the decade for Warner Bros.: budget said to have passed $180 million

A week before the premiere of “Digger” — Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film starring Tom Cruise as a Texas oil billionaire — news from the film industry is growing ever gloomier: according to industry magazine Variety, in an analysis widely cited today by American media, Warner Bros. studio risks recording one of the biggest financial losses of the decade.

According to Variety’s calculations, the official $125 million budget the studio continues to declare does not reflect the real costs: the film is said to have reached about $180 million — almost as much as “Dune: Part Two.” On that math, “Digger” would need about $350 million at the global box office just to break even; Warner Bros. itself disputes that figure and claims “only” $300 million would suffice.

Meanwhile, as Page Six reports, forecasts for the opening weekend have fallen to just $8–12 million, from about $30 million a few weeks ago and $20 million in recent days — unheard-of figures for a film starring Tom Cruise. The studio is openly embracing the bad publicity: in a rushed video on platform X, Warner Bros. calls on viewers to “decide for yourself” whether the film is worth it.

Reviews have been brutal since the embargo lifted on Monday: David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called the film suffocating in meta-references, while critics at the New York Post and Boston Globe gave it the lowest possible scores — the first at that level for a Warner Bros. production since “The Bride.” The film opens in cinemas on October 2, the same weekend as the thriller “Verity,” which is tracking at over $30 million for its opening.

For Warner Bros., “Digger” is capping a catastrophic year: according to Variety, “One Battle After Another” — Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning film — cost the studio about $100 million in losses (budget $130 million, revenue $213 million), while the comedy “Coyote vs. Acme,” which the studio once wanted to bury forever, has outgrossed almost all of the studio’s productions this year at the box office.

Tom Cruise, star of the film “Digger.” Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).