**Minor Spoilers for Digger.

Well, the weekend box office was worse than expected for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger. Last week, ahead of Digger’s wide release, box-office prognosticators began to raise the alert that Digger would be a massive bomb, and that Warner Bros’ executives were out of their damn minds by giving Iñárritu and Tom Cruise as much as $180 million to make what amounts to a convoluted art film. As it turns out, Digger is not a success at any level – critics hate it, there’s zero awards buzz, and it’s officially one of the biggest box-office bombs of Tom Cruise’s career. Verity opened strong though!

In “Digger,” Tom Cruise portrays a powerful oil tycoon who is bracing for an ecological disaster of epic proportions. But nothing could have prepared him for the catastrophe that’s unfolding at the box office, where “Digger” has collapsed with an embarrassing $8 million from 3,321 North American theaters. Rivals believe the figure will be closer to $7.5 million when the final numbers are tallied on Monday.

With a production budget of $160 to $180 million, “Digger” will wind up as not just one of the biggest bombs of the year but potentially of all time. Warner Bros. was hoping the combination of Tom Cruise, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and director Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose critical and commercial wins include “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” would at least propel initial grosses to $18 million to $20 million. And even those ticket sales would have been financially disastrous for the mega-budgeted satirical film. Box office experts say a movie of this size would have needed a debut near $40 million to justify its price tag. Those projections were revised down (and revised down again) after a deluge of bad buzz. The R-rated satire opened in fifth place behind another newcomer, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson’s psychological thriller “Verity,” and three holdovers, including “Resident Evil” and “Heart of the Beast.”

“For a black comedy, the numbers are not bad. But black comedies are small films, and this isn’t a small film. It’s a Tom Cruise movie,” says analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Re. “The comedy walks a fine line, and when it misses, it misses.”

Reviews and word-of-mouth for “Digger” have been so negative that Warner Bros. tried to embrace the unfavorable press. In a recent ad, the studio told moviegoers to “decide for yourself” after critics bashed the movie as “unpleasant” and “baffling.” Another marketing spot suggested that only American audiences disliked “Digger.” However the movie was equally rejected at the international box office with a tragic $12 million from 73 international markets for a global start of $20 million.

“Digger” was always a gamble as the rare big-budget, star-driven R-rated original comedy. Warner Bros. greenlit the film for $125 million, but the price tag soared after production ran long. Since the studio spent another $100 million on global marketing efforts, “Digger” has a theatrical break-even point of roughly $350 million globally, according to executives with knowledge of similar films. A Warner Bros. spokesperson pushed back, saying the film’s break-even point is $300 million. Either way, “Digger” is primed to lose at least $150 million to $200 million theatrically. (Theater owners keep roughly half of ticket sales.) Profitability for the studio will take even longer because Cruise gets first-dollar gross, meaning he earns a percentage of revenues before the studio recoups any costs.

“Even with respectable ancillary income based on the film’s pedigree,” says Gross, referring to revenue streams like digital rental, sales, streaming and TV licensing, “the movie is going to lose a lot of money.”

[From Variety]

Once you know the big spoiler for Digger, it’s even more insane that Warner Bros kept writing checks for this film. Like, this was supposed to be a Wes Anderson-level art film, and in fact, Wes Anderson already used the exact same “plot twist” a few years ago. This is the very definition of “throwing good money after bad.” I can’t even blame Tom Cruise alone, although I’m sure his name was the entire reason why WB allowed this budget to get so unnecessarily bloated. If Tom had just scratched this itch by making a small-budget film because he believed in the story, I think the critical response would have been much more generous. Like “what a swing, at least he just got this out of his system in a film with a $35 million budget.” Instead, this is Cruise’s Ishtar.

PS… The Kate Effect strikes again!!

Screencaps and poster courtesy of ‘Digger’ trailer/Warner Bros and photos courtesy of Backgrid and Cover Images.