Digger Heads Toward a $250 Million Loss for Warner Bros.

Digger was positioned as something unusual: a Tom Cruise film with a director of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s standing, sold as a twisty dark comedy about “the most powerful man in the world” facing the consequences of his actions. The opening weekend suggested audiences were not persuaded. The film took in $8 million in its first three days, among the weakest debuts of Cruise’s career.

The problem is arithmetic. According to The Wrap, Digger is not expected to exceed $40 million in theaters. Against a production budget reported between $163 million and $173 million, plus roughly $100 million in marketing, that projection points to a loss near $250 million for Warner Bros. — territory occupied by John Carter and The Lone Ranger, two of the most cited examples of studio-scale failure in recent Hollywood memory.

What makes the result worth examining beyond the ledger is the mismatch. Iñárritu assembled a cast that includes John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons, and the film stands as Cruise’s most political project in decades. That combination, a prestige director, a stacked ensemble and a pointed subject, is not the package that usually collapses this quickly or this publicly.

Studios will read the number as a verdict on one specific bet rather than on any single element within it. Whether that reading holds is a separate question, and one the box office has never been equipped to answer.