The Tom Cruise-led eco-satire "Digger," directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, has been a catastrophic failure at the box office, with industry insiders predicting it could lose studio Warner os. a quarter of a billion dollars. The film was intended to mark the action star's return to more serious acting roles.
Panned by critics and met with audience indifference, "Digger" features Cruise as an eccentric oil baron who must confront and fix the environmental problems he helped create. After two weeks in theaters, the movie has grossed a mere $14.4 million in North America and only $35.3 million globally.
These figures are disastrous for a big-budget film. Its production cost ranged from $160 million to $180 million, with marketing expenses potentially adding another $100 million. Projections point to a cumulative loss in the region of $245 million. "Financially it has to be considered a disaster," Christopher Rosen of The Ankler told AFP.
Daniel Loria of Boxoffice Pro noted that the film was greenlit under previous Warner os. executives known for backing original, filmmaker-driven projects. "Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't," he said. Analysts suggest the film's nature as an art-house satire of American culture by a foreign director was always going to be a tough sell for a general audience.
The presence of Cruise, who was credited with saving the post-pandemic box office with "Top Gun: Maverick," has only magnified the failure. Paul Dergarabedian, a market analyst, noted, "Anything he does is going to be under a microscope." The film's poor performance appears to be a result of a marketing mismatch, as it was promoted like a blockbuster but was, at its core, an art-house film.
Source: AFP
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