Digger, Alejandro Iñárritu’s eco-satire starring Tom Cruise and seen as a return to more serious roles for the actor, has had a difficult start at the box office, with industry analysts estimating it could lose Warner Bros. close to a quarter of a billion dollars.
The comedy, in which Cruise plays an eccentric oil baron who must resolve a crisis he helped create, has received a mixed-to-negative response from critics and has yet to find a wide audience.
After two weeks in theaters, the film has earned $14.4 million in North America and $35.3 million worldwide. For a production of its scale, those figures suggest cumulative losses of around $245 million.
“Financially it has to be considered a disaster,” Christopher Rosen of Hollywood trade publication The Ankler told AFP.
“It cost anywhere from $160 million to $180 million, that’s even before marketing, and it’s made relatively nothing at the box office.”
Marketing for a film of this kind can cost up to $100 million.
The result comes at a sensitive moment for Warner Bros., as its merger with Paramount Skydance closes.
A commitment to original filmmaking?
Digger was greenlit under outgoing Warner Bros. film chiefs Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca, who became known for giving filmmakers the resources and studio support to pursue original, innovative projects.
“Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Daniel Loria of Boxoffice Pro told AFP.
Loria noted that the film, an art-house satire of American culture from a non-American director, was likely always going to be a challenging proposition for mainstream audiences.
“This movie was never going to get a general audience to get behind it, right? I don’t think it was ever designed like that,” he said.
“The film takes every opportunity to push the audience in uncomfortable directions.
“American audiences don’t have the easiest time accepting films that criticize American culture, especially when they’re made by foreigners.”
A high-profile release
Cruise’s presence ensured the film drew considerable attention. The actor is widely credited with helping cinemas recover after the pandemic with Top Gun: Maverick, and he was closely involved in promoting Digger.
“You’ve got arguably the biggest movie star in the world was literally everywhere for this movie,” Paul Dergarabedian, a market analyst at Rentrak, told AFP.
“He was so excited about this movie and working with Alejandro Iñárritu.
“By virtue of Tom Cruise’s star power, there was a spotlight on this movie. Anything he does is going to be under a microscope.”
Given Cruise’s standing, comparisons with his multi-billion-dollar Mission: Impossible franchise were perhaps inevitable, though Digger was never expected to perform at that level.
Viewed alongside Iñárritu’s previous work, the results are more in keeping with his track record, Loria said. The director’s films “aren’t really too worried about their box office total; they’re worried about having an artistic endeavor behind” them.
In Loria’s view, the difficulty may have lain in how the film was positioned.
“Unfortunately, I think this was marketed as a general audience movie, when at heart, this is an art-house film.”
The premise
So, what's all the fuss about?
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a flamboyant oil tycoon who seems to live in a hermetically sealed bubble of his own importance. The bubble bursts when he learns that his company's drilling in Greenland has done two very bad things at once. It has released a dangerous plume of methane, and it has knocked an ice shelf loose from a glacier. The ice shelf is now drifting toward Europe, where it could set off a tsunami and a catastrophe on a continental scale.
The orbit of lunatics around Digger is stacked:
Riz Ahmed as Ganesh, the scientist who delivers the bad news
Sandra Hüller as Digger's prickly half-sister and business partner
John Goodman as an authoritarian U.S. president with cancer
Michael Stuhlbarg as his spineless vice president
Jesse Plemons as an enigma whose purpose only becomes clear late in the film
Iñárritu co-wrote the script with his Birdman collaborators Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolás Giacobone, along with Sabina Berman. There is also a twist fairly early on that flips the whole premise upside down, and it seems certain to become the most argued-over plot point of the fall.
The praise
For some critics, Digger is the kind of creative risk Hollywood is often said to avoid.
IndieWire’s Jim Hemphill was among its strongest supporters, calling it Cruise’s best role since Magnolia and one of the most visually inventive, conceptually daring and unpredictable studio films ever made. He suggested its ambition was so great that it makes Iñárritu’s sprawling Bardo look like 'an episode of The Golden Girls.'
His IndieWire colleague Anne Thompson described it as “a brave and gorgeous art film,” while noting that it may struggle with mainstream audiences but could resonate with the Academy, particularly its craft and acting branches. For a Warner Bros. awards contender, that may be the most significant assessment.
Mixed reactions
Other critics admired the ambition more than the execution.
Matt Neglia, founder of Next Best Picture, called it “Tom Cruise’s most dynamic and interesting role in years,” but felt the part allowed Cruise to play broadly without going deeper. In his view, the performance could have carried more power and nuance had the story not leaned so heavily toward zany spectacle that he found empty.
The critics
Some reviewers were less persuaded. Awards Radar’s Joey Magidson called the film a “mess,” writing that “not a whole lot works here” and that “this wasn’t enjoyable.”
Critic Edward Douglas said he understood what Iñárritu and Cruise were aiming for but could not call the result very good, predicting a “HORRENDOUS” CinemaScore from opening-night audiences.
With inputs from AFP