Digger may lose $150m after Tom Cruise film bombs at the box office — SkimNews
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- Digger opened to $20M globally — $8M domestically and $12M across 74 international markets — against a production budget pegged at $125-150M, with marketing estimated at another $100M.
- Warner Bros ran "decide for yourself" ads in response to brutal reviews, with critics panning the film as a strained climate-change farce and audiences giving it a C+ CinemaScore, though Cruise's over-the-top performance was received more warmly.
- Amazon MGM's Verity took the #1 North American spot with $32.6M in its debut, extending a streak for Colleen Hoover adaptations, while Digger had been positioned as an awards-season heavyweight similar to last year's One Battle After Another ($213.2M worldwide, Best Picture winner).
- The flop lands as Paramount Skydance completes its $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery — US district court approval came last Wednesday, the deal is set to close Tuesday, and mass layoffs are anticipated under the incoming David Ellison-led regime.
- Warner Bros has failed to push any film to $100M domestically in 2025, though December's Dune: Part III is expected to easily clear that bar, according to the article.
- Tom Cruise's last major box-office disappointment was 2017's The Mummy, which still grossed $409.2M worldwide on a $195M budget, per the source.
Why it matters: Film consultant David A Gross framed the moment bluntly — 'Paramount does not have a recent history of making big, auteur-driven films like this; that strategy appears to be over and out.' The $125-150M write-down arrives on the eve of the Paramount-Warner Bros merger close and expected mass layoffs, putting the new regime's appetite for big-budget original filmmaking under immediate scrutiny.
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