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Despite a major star's return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing, Digger looks set to become one of the biggest box-office disasters of the year.
Despite a major star's return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing, Digger looks set to become one of the biggest box-office disasters of the year.
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. Digger is an R-rated black comedy about an oil tycoon tasked with saving the world from a catastrophe his drilling caused.
Warner predicts the film will only earn $12-15 million US domestically this weekend. Despite a major star's return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing,, the dark comedy from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise saw its costs balloon from an original budget of $125 million US to $160-180 million — putting a break-even return around $350 million US when including its marketing spend.
. , Warner predicts the film will only earn $12-15 million US domestically this weekend: a dismal opening for the studio in a year already littered with poor performers. Following their filmsall releasing to apparent losses, that string of failures will possibly be capped by one of Warner Bros.
's biggest flops of the decade.was always a risk. The R-rated black comedy opted to skip the festival circuit entirely — instead operating on the hopes that strong word of mouth and big-name buzz would convince audiences to get off the couch and head to theatres.
The strategy of avoiding early critical negativity and gunning straight for Cruise fans made a sort of sense: it represents the actor's first non-franchise film since 2017's Barry Seal biopicCBC film critic Jackson Weaver is clear: Digger is a surreal, absurd, winding, tongue-in-cheek movie about an evil oil tycoon and the cataclysmic climate disaster that he creates. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's dark comedy has polarized critics with some calling it brave while while others call it a baffling, pretentious mess.snagged Leonardo DiCaprio his long-awaited best actor award along with another director win for Iñárritu.
But as its earliest critical responses started to release last month, a wave of negative press threatened to sink those chances.would be too experimental and odd to ever hope to recoup its budget.did pull off positive numbers, though not a single Warner movie has earned above $100 million US domestically this year. , which made less than $1 million US off its reported $150 million US budget, is still the biggest failure of the year.
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And given Cruise films' strong brand recognition, it could prove to be popular on streaming.that Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy — Warner's famously director-friendly film chiefs — would not continue with the company after the merger.taking bold, thematic risks — and being rewarded with such poor box office returns — could bode poorly for the new conglomerate's artistic choices. Jackson Weaver is a reporter and film critic for CBC's entertainment news team in Toronto. You can reach him at jackson.weaver@cbc.ca.
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