Digger Flop Caps Death of Eat-the-Rich Satire — SkimNews
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- Digger is projected to lose $250m (£190m) during its cinema run, with the source blaming audience fatigue with the eat-the-rich satire trend rather than Warner Bros marketing choices
- The eat-the-rich wave peaked after Parasite's breakout, spawning Glass Onion, Saltburn, Triangle of Sadness and The Menu in film and Succession and The White Lotus on TV
- This year's class-satire flops include Ready or Not 2, They Will Kill You, Rosebush Pruning and I Love Boosters, all of which belly-flopped at the box office
- Netflix's anthology series Beef returned for a second season but barely cracked the platform's daily top 10 before disappearing after pivoting to familiar class-warfare territory
- Romain Gavras's Sacrifice, starring Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy and John Malkovich, will debut on Netflix later this week — more than a year after its festival premiere landed with a thud and after struggling to find a distributor
- Digger is the final film released by Warner Bros as an independent studio, with Skydance CEO David Ellison — an enthusiastic Trump backer — taking over the studio
- Public sentiment against the wealthy remains strong despite the box office slump, with YouGov showing 75% of Britons and 60% of Americans support higher taxes on the wealthiest earners
Why it matters: The financial stakes are concrete and large: Digger alone is projected to lose $250m, and the genre's collapse comes as public anger at the rich hits record highs (75% of Britons backing higher wealth taxes per YouGov). With Digger the last Warner Bros release before Trump-backer David Ellison's Skydance takeover, the very studio willing to greenlight billionaire satire may be the next casualty.
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