Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ sinks even deeper: weekend projected at $7–10 million — his weakest opening since 2007

The slide continues. After $1.2 million from early Thursday shows, Digger took only about $2 million on Friday — excluding previews — taking its opening day to roughly $3.25 million including them, as box-office tracker Itsjat32 reported on October 3. At this pace, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s satire is on track for an opening weekend of around $7 million — a figure that would mark Tom Cruise’s weakest opening since 2007.

Deadline’s Friday-evening update was somewhat more optimistic, with about $4 million on opening day including previews and a weekend projection of $10 million; Forbes also reported on October 3 a “disastrous” $10 million projection for the debut weekend. Whichever figure proves true, the result falls far below even the studio’s gloomiest expectations: Warner Bros. had projected $12–15 million going into the weekend, while Box Office Pro’s long-range forecast once pointed to $20–30 million, as Fiction Horizon reports.

JoBlo had already warned that an $11 million debut would be Cruise’s weakest opening since Lions for Lambs (2007); a $7 million weekend would sink even below that historic threshold. And the financial picture is unforgiving: the film was greenlit with a $125 million budget, but reports put the final cost at $160–180 million after the production ran over schedule — meaning it needs over $300–350 million worldwide just to break even.

In the film, Cruise — almost unrecognizable under prosthetics — plays Digger Rockwell, an oil magnate whose drilling in Greenland breaks off an ice shelf and triggers a global catastrophe; it is Iñárritu’s first English-language film since The Revenant, with a cast that includes Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde and Emma D’Arcy. Critics are sharply divided — just 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway’s Verity takes the weekend crown with around $32 million, and Digger remains Warner Bros.’ last release as an independent studio, on the verge of passing under Paramount’s ownership.