Warner Bros. went all in on star Tom Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu by pouring about $250 million down the shitter into Digger, which is now not only a confirmed flop, but a historical flop.
With a production budget rumored to be around $180 million and a promotion budget that must have grazed at least $70 million, Digger opened to a dreadful $8 million despite a massive release into over 3,300 theaters.
Some estimates are even lower than $8 million.
As for its prospects, or box office legs, an absolutely dreadful C+ Cinemascore from those who saw the movie is generally a sign of a quick, painful, and expensive death.
Recent flops such as Novacaine, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Nobody 2, and M3Gan 2.0 opened above $8 million.
If past is prologue, Digger’s domestic box office will die without hitting $20 million. That would put Warner’s losses in the $150 million range.
Because Democrats got it good, Digger’s bombastic attack on the oil that makes Western Civilization possible is already going through a — try not to laugh — reassessment. Generally, years, if not decades, pass before a movie is reassessed. You know, it shows up on TV or enjoys a surprising number of home video sales. But no, Film Twitter is butthurt over their latest woke lecture getting creamed by the disgusted-by-woke and exhausted-by-woke indifference of Normal People, so we get this…
Yeah, well, we’ll see…
Either way, who exactly was this movie made for? The biggest movie star in the world gets ugly under a ton of prosthetics. The trailer comes off as bombastic and unpleasant. Sure, you can see someone spending $25 million on this to serve a niche audience, but $250 million!!?? The entertainment industry is so out of touch, so hostile toward Normal People, and so unwilling to get back in touch that you can only shake your head and thank the movie gods for your Blu-Ray collection.
Hollywood refuses to make comedies we enjoy, refuses to make religious movies we enjoy, refuses to give us classic heroes, and sets out to destroy everything we love about the movies we grew up with. On top of that, a quarter of a billion — with a “B” — is dumped into crap like this.
Lunacy and hate are not a profitable business plan.