Tom Cruise’s Digger Stumbles to His Weakest Opening Since 2007

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons (author and license on file page).

Tom Cruise’s big awards-season swing has landed with a thud at the box office. Digger, the R-rated dark comedy directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, opened to roughly $8 million in the U.S. and Canada over the October 2–4 weekend and finished fifth, according to studio estimates reported by AFP and Boxoffice Pro. Another $12 million or so from overseas put its worldwide launch near $20 million.

That is the softest debut for a Cruise-led film since Lions for Lambs opened to $6.7 million in 2007, and it comes on a far bigger budget, reported at $125 million to $150 million. Through Wednesday, October 7, the film had taken in about $10.6 million domestically, per The Numbers.

A rare miss for a reliable star

In Digger, Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose drilling sets off a disaster and who then races to prove he is the man to save the world from it. Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and Sophie Wilde round out the cast. It is Cruise’s first original film since 2017’s American Made, and pairing him with the director of Birdman and The Revenant was widely read as a bid for an acting Oscar.

Reviews and audience scores did not help. The film drew a C+ CinemaScore and a Rotten Tomatoes score of around 51%, which TV Insider and The Daily Beast noted makes it his worst-reviewed release in years. Cruise struck a positive note on social media after the opening, saying he was honored to have made the film with its cast and crew.

The weekend belonged to Verity, the Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, which opened at No. 1 with $32.6 million. Holdovers Resident Evil ($12.5 million) and Brad Pitt’s Heart of the Beast ($11 million) placed second and third. For more on Resident Evil‘s run, see our earlier box office report.

Sources

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