Tom Cruise’s latest star-studded, blockbuster-priced release, Digger, has been deemed a significant financial flop. While he’s enjoyed countless box office successes throughout his career, the politically charged satire has become a shocking reminder that he is only human. And, although we gave it a four-star review, Digger is forecast to lose approximately $245 million.
But this is not the first time Cruise has suffered failure. Here are some of his biggest busts and misfires – including some whose fortunes later changed.
Five of Tom Cruise's biggest box office failures
1) Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
First up, there’s Edge of Tomorrow – a rare Tom Cruise failure with an even rarer redemption arc. The apocalyptic, war-torn sci-fi was based on the epic and seminal manga from Hiroshi Sakurazaka, All You Need Is Kill, and adopted a Groundhog Day-like narrative structure. Cruise delivers an emotional and heart-pumping performance opposite Emily Blunt, who also gives one of her best performances to date.
Unfortunately for Cruise, this epic blockbuster needed its own kind of time travel to combat the struggle it had when it hit cinemas. With a massive budget of $178 million, Cruise and director Doug Liman needed the picture to make a big splash upon its release in America. Unfortunately, Edge of Tomorrow staggered its way through the box office, earning just over $100 million throughout the course of its domestic run. And this was all despite mostly being loved by critics.
Its slight uptick in sales across the rest of the world spurred Warner Bros on to ensure the picture’s success after its domestic release, however. When Edge of Tomorrow was released on home video later that year in October 2014, its artwork and title were repackaged with its previous tagline, ‘Live. Die. Repeat’, front and centre. Digital retailers have also listed the movie under the combination of the two names ‘Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow’.
This quick change seemed to do the job for Cruise and co, giving the movie a more original title that set itself apart from the crowd. The confusingly titled movie ranked number one in home media sales upon its release, with a further $28 million earned in the USA alone.
Since then, both Cruise and Blunt have expressed interest in bringing the time-bending world of Edge of Tomorrow / Live Die Repeat back with a sequel, with the latest whispers surfacing as recently as 2024.
2) Legend (1985)
View oEmbed on the source websiteTom Cruise has never again starred in a film like Legend, and with good reason. The movie saw the star as Jack, a whimsical forest-dweller who is tasked with saving a princess (Mia Sara) from an evil power known only as the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry). Sound good so far? To make things even more tantalising, it was directed by Ridley Scott, three years after he released Blade Runner, and six years after Alien.
It all fell apart when production began, though. After some difficulty finding someone who would write the script, the film was halted when a fire broke out on set at Pinewood Studios on Wednesday, June 27, 1984, with damages racking up to around $700,000. Thankfully, no one was injured.
Scott eventually produced a film that had a 125-minute runtime, before deciding it was too long. He trimmed it down to 113 minutes. Another 20 minutes were cut, and this 95-minute version was released in the UK. The USA, on the other hand, received an even more watered-down 89-minute cut, with Scott noting: "European audiences are more sophisticated. They accept preambles and subtleties whereas the US goes for a much broader stroke."
Cruise didn’t enjoy the experience of making the film, either. He later told Rolling Stone that he 'never wanted to do another movie like that again', claiming his performance was just "another colour in a Ridley Scott painting".
Despite the disdain for Legend from both critics and fans — the film grossed just $23.5 million on a $25 million budget — it has been the source of various tales of fan speculation.
Famously, internet myths suggested Legend somehow inspired Nintendo video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto to create the best-selling franchise The Legend of Zelda. However, considering the NES game hit shelves mere months after the film’s release, this has been well and truly debunked.
Meanwhile, Legend did absolutely spawn another widely-adored franchise. While working with Ridley Scott, Cruise met the director’s brother, Tony. The following year, they worked together to bring Top Gun to life.
3) Days of Thunder (1990)
Speaking of Top Gun, just four years after its box office-smashing release, Cruise once again felt the need for speed. He brought Top Gun director Tony Scott, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer back on board for a new high-octane movie: Days of Thunder. What could go wrong?
Based on an idea Cruise had after going for dinner with some NASCAR racers, he took on the role of hot-shot driver Cole Trickle. In the movie, he attempted to adapt a very similar story to his previous airborne venture - but it was not received well at all. Days of Thunder was slated by critics, still maintaining a dismal 38 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
While Days of Thunder earned a somewhat respectable box office number of around $157 million, it was deemed a failure as the production of the picture was riddled with delays. The original $35 million budget was doubled, meaning a box office performance of around $100 million was needed just to break even. There were also reports of ongoing disagreements between director Scott and producers Don Simpson and Bruckheimer and vast delays that ran on for months.
All of this was in addition to the great expectations pinned on Cruise just after Top Gun’s monolithic success. At the time, Days of Thunder begged the question of whether Cruise’s major win was a legitimate success, or perhaps a mere flash in the pan.
Still, none of this has stopped Cruise from resuscitating the movie’s legacy. As recently as August of this year, he confirmed a Days of Thunder sequel is in the works with Anne Hathaway joining as "a racecar team owner and engineer". Long Shot director, Jonathan Levine, is due to helm the picture, with Cruise and his long-time partner Bruckheimer acting as executive producers once again.
4) Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
With Days of Thunder’s shocking performance in mind, one cannot avoid the reality of Cruise’s one and only Mission: Impossible failure in Dead Reckoning Part One. The film’s predecessor, Fallout, was the franchise's highest-grossing film to date, and with the excitement for Ethan Hunt, the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) and the world of realistic rubber masks higher than ever, Dead Reckoning Part One seemed to have an open goal.
Unfortunately, Cruise could not score.
Production began on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in early 2020, with filming due to commence in February. But the Covid-19 pandemic soon brought things to an end. Through a number of starts and stops, filming began in earnest around September. In December of the same year, an audio clip of Cruise scolding workers for reportedly "not adhering to COVID social distancing" protocols was leaked.
On top of that, director Christopher McQuarrie was blasted by Polish nationals for arranging to blow up an old decommissioned railway bridge in the country. The local government noted that the structure was already in a state of disrepair, and needed to be removed to "open up the area to tourism". McQuarrie himself released a statement through Empire about the events, noting that the bridge was not a registered monument, and only a portion of the already damaged bridge would be destroyed. Eventually, the bridge was deemed a monument, and the scene McQuarrie and Cruise were trying to film was later moved to North Yorkshire.
Finally, after an elongated production and international negotiations, Dead Reckoning Part One was released on 12 July, 2023. And while punter turnout was good, the film felt doomed to fail. Variety reported that the movie cost "roughly $300 million before marketing spends of at least $100 million". It added the film studios could have lost "nearly $100 million" if it didn’t cross around $600 million worldwide. Ultimately, Dead Reckoning Part One earned $571 million at the box office, somehow damning it as a box office failure.
Despite it all, Cruise didn’t waver. He followed up with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning two years later (2025), and he went bigger and better than ever. The last entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise earned a staggering $598 million at the box office, over a $350 million budget.
5) Knight and Day (2010)
Not too long before Dead Reckoning, Cruise had another bust at cinemas. After working together closely on the hugely successful Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky, Cruise recruited Cameron Diaz once again for the light-hearted, action-filled romp Knight and Day. This romantic-espionage movie saw the two A-list heartthrobs trying to take down bad guys while having some laughs along the way – surely, this was a hole-in-one?
And, in many ways, this was a film built to succeed; the story was more-or-less based on similarly successful pictures from the early 2000s, such as Mr & Mrs Smith. However, this script in particular seemed to have some problems attached to it. Throughout the 2000s, the script (under the original working title Wichita) had already seen some other big names (albeit smaller than Cruise) decline the leading role, including Adam Sandler and Chris Tucker.
And while the film’s buzz was middling at best, Cruise and Diaz went on a worldwide press tour, making appearances on morning TV shows and radio stations around the globe. Brits might even recall the pair appearing on Top Gear to race against The Stig’s best time back in 2010.
However, upon the film’s release, it quickly became clear that the box office certainly was not going to meet the high expectations of this double-A-lister movie. Release day welcomed a weak $3.8 million, with a $20 million opening weekend.
But, after all was said and done, and Knight and Day was deemed a total failure by its production company Fox, Cruise somehow remained untouchable. Even to the point where Fox executive, Tony Sella, told the LA Times that the Mission: Impossible star had no part in the picture’s issues. "Blame me," he said. "Don’t blame Tom Cruise. We did lots of focus groups for this film, and no one ever said there was a star problem. Never. Tom Cruise was not the issue."
Ultimately Tom Cruise is Hollywood personified. He’s synonymous with cinema and has been a bastion of all things bombastic over the past two decades. He’s remained adamant he is creating cinema, not just movies, and he says (and does) it all with his chest. He has hung off planes and run up the Burj Khalifa, become an expert HALO jumper and ridden a motorcycle directly into oncoming traffic at the Arc de Triomphe.
The 64-year-old will no doubt be making films until he physically cannot anymore. He might be the final film star of all time. While he’s earned a few box office busts, with Digger being more Legend than Mission: Impossible - Fallout, we can’t deny he always brings his all, as he does with every movie he brings to screens.
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