He has spent months relentlessly building anticipation for his new movie – but even Tom Cruise’s star power couldn’t stop Digger from bombing at the box office on its opening weekend.
The critically panned satire grossed just $8million in US cinemas, with international sales of $12million from 74 countries.
This for a movie which cost at least $125million to make, with some insiders reporting that the production budget was actually closer to $160million. On top of that, $100million is thought to have been spent on marketing.
The film, directed by Alejandro G Iñárritu, needs to make around $350million in movie theatres across the world to break even but industry experts say it is on course to lose $150million, which would make it one of the biggest flops of Cruise’s 45-year career.
The actor’s 2007 political thriller Lions for Lambs was another major flop but cost only $35million to make. Ten years later Cruise’s attempt at revitalising The Mummy franchise was also a huge misfire, losing $95million.
At the opposite end of the scale, Verity, the chilling thriller based on Colleen Hoover’s smash hit novel and starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, made $32.6million over the same weekend, comfortably earning the No1 spot at the box office.
Tom Cruise has spent months building anticipation for his new movie Digger
The critically panned satire grossed $8 million in US cinemas, and $12 million internationally
Digger’s opening was even beaten by the likes of Resident Evil, which has been in cinemas for two weeks.
Despite Cruise’s huge publicity blitz, which saw him take part in his first magazine interview for years, alongside multiple TV appearances and even a London premiere attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales, last week’s reviews for Digger were the first nail in the coffin.
The big-budget black comedy was positioned as a major awards contender for the actor, as he underwent a dramatic transformation to take on the role of an eccentric oil tycoon who unknowingly sparks an ecological disaster.
Reviews for the film have been hugely mixed, with one noting that the role is indeed a bold one for Tom, given his decades-long reputation for big-budget blockbusters.
The Daily Mail’s Brian Viner leaned on the side of praise, as he awarded the film four stars, writing: ‘I’ve already seen Digger twice, and enjoyed it much more the second time, knowing the twists from the start.
‘First time round, I felt it got tangled in its own conceit and artifice, becoming not just baffling but self-indulgent.
‘Nonetheless, this is bold and often brilliant film-making, with deserved whispers of Oscar nominations for Inarritu, Cruise and Goodman, and fabulous supporting performances from Ahmed, Sandra Huller and Jesse Plemons, not to mention an animatronic cat.’
Other critics to laud the film included the BBC’s Nicholas Barber, who wrote in his four-star review: ‘Personally, I loved it. Some of its excesses are, well, a bit too excessive, and most viewers will wish it was shorter.
The movie is thought to have cost between $125 million and $160 million to make
Tom was still hard at work on Monday as he promoted the movie in Tokyo, Japan
The actor looked emotional as he thanked fans for the reception. The movie opens in Japan on October 9
‘After about 90 minutes, you get tired of close-ups of Goodman yelling while snake-sized veins bulge out of his forehead.
‘But when Cruise is clambering all over the set, delivering thunderous lectures on the oil industry, I couldn’t help grinning at the gargantuan scale of his performance, the conviction of the script’s grim environmental message, and Iñárritu’s antic style.’
In The Telegraph, Robbie Collin branded Digger ‘the most bonkers film of the year’, writing: ‘Digger itself exists in that perpetually uncertain state, and I’m not sure whether the debate it’s having with itself about art’s impotence in the face of catastrophe is one it can, or even wants to, resolve.
‘But what a thrill to watch Iñárritu and Cruise hash it out with so much beauty, daring and extravagance.’
However, many reviews were on the negative side, with The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw awarding the film just two stars.
He wrote: ‘As with Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, there may be a tacit consensus, understandable at some level, that at least we have a big mainstream movie which is talking about the biggest issue of our time, and we have a duty to suspend critical objection.
‘Digger certainly resonates with Donald Trump’s greedy urge to despoil the Arctic and everywhere else. Yet there is something glib and overblown here. This film finds itself in a postmodern hole. And what do you do when you’re in a hole?’
Kevin Maher in The Times went further, and gave the film just one star while writing: ‘There surely exists an alternate movie universe where Digger is played by an actual ”older” actor, say Dustin Hoffman or Ben Kingsley, and in that universe that film is certainly more effective than this one.
Digger follows the world’s most powerful man, eccentric oil tycoon as he races to fix a catastrophic ecological disaster. The film co-stars John Goodman as the dictatorial President
‘Cruise, instead, is in the unenviable position of being Digger’s sole selling point and its fatal flaw.’
In his two-star review, Empire’s Olly Richards wrote: ‘Digger is a bumptious blowhard… Cruise emerges with a win, reminding us how riveting he can be as an actor, not just as a movie star.
‘A role so oversized and absurd demands fearless commitment, which he certainly gives. The big swing is laudable. If only the film were more rewarding.’
Writing in Variety, Owen Gleiberman said: ‘I’m not sure that “Digger” is going to connect, because it’s so full of itself – so top-heavy with importance.
‘The movie cost north of $125 million to make, and that figure is not only too big to probably justify itself; it’s a testament to the arrogance of the filmmakers – to the assumption that we’ll turn out in droves for this ponderous absurdist lecture.’
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), Digger follows the world’s most powerful man, eccentric oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (played by Cruise), as he races to fix a catastrophic ecological disaster that he himself unleashed.
The film co-stars John Goodman as the dictatorial President of the United States.
Digger is one of the few awards-focused movies that Cruise has starred in for almost three decades and is directed by four-time Oscar winner Alejandro, who is known for his work on Birdman and The Revenant.
