Warner Bros Digs One Final Box Office Crater

It ended with a bang. But the bad kind. More an implosion than an explosion.

Opening in over 3,000 locations, the R-rated movie grossed an estimated $8 million for the weekend. The studio has said the film cost $125 million but others put the total closer to $150 million because of a delay in production after a cast member, John Goodman, fell on the set and had to recover before shooting could continue. With nearly $100 million more spent on marketing — Mr. Cruise only flies private — the studio could lose $125 million to $150 million in total, making it one of the biggest flops of the year.

Any way you frame it, $8M is a disaster. Since Hollywood loves to frame everything around box office revenue to be able to constantly tout records (as opposed to the more honest ticket sales, which remain bad even amidst record revenue numbers), let's do it the other way: $8M in 2026 dollars is the equivalent of a $3.5M opening weekend back in 1996. The summer, 30 years ago, happens to be when Tom Cruise opened his first Mission: Impossible movie – to the tune of $45.4M for the opening weekend. That would be almost exactly a $100M opening weekend in 2026 dollars.¹

So yeah, this is an order of magnitude disaster. Especially when you take into account that budget plus marketing spend. One lovely parting gift from David Zaslav as he hands Warner Bros to David Ellison this coming week.

Not that Ellison will care too much. He's firmly in the Tom Cruise business, having helped produce the last several Mission: Impossible films (ever since 2011's Ghost Protocol – aka Mission: Impossible 4), alongside basically everything else Cruise has touched since – though notably not Digger. Box office bombs happen, even for the world's Last True Movie Star™.

Of course, this outcome felt entirely predictable to anyone who saw the trailers for the film – some of us even predicted it based off of that! Much like last year's One Battle After Another, this seems like a hard movie to market, but especially when you choose to market it weirdly. The difference, of course, is that One Battle won the war: or should I say, awards. It was a very good movie and took home many Oscars including Best Picture. It still didn't do great at the box office, but it was bolstered quite a bit by word-of-mouth. Digger is unlikely to get such a bounce.

While there's some level of buzz amongst those who feel like the film is misunderstood – perhaps because the three acts are totally different, with the first one in particular undermining the rest of the movie – the reviews have been bad to brutal. Sometimes movie stars miss and sometimes directors do too. And sometimes when mixed together, they really miss.

But the bigger picture is that this sort of Dr. Strangelove-like attempt at political satire/statement probably was never going to do big box office business. If Tom Cruise can't open it, no one could. It undoubtedly would have been better suited to a streaming service, but Tom Cruise – Mr. Movie Theater – doesn't do that.

There are seemingly quite a few parallels with Don't Look Up, Adam McKay's 2021 movie in a similar vein starring the world's other Last True Movie Star™, Leonardo DiCaprio. That was his first streaming movie (though it did have a limited theatrical run for awards considerations, per the Netflix way) and it also was a misfire. But it did well on streaming because... it's a Leonardo DiCaprio movie.

Again, I know Tom Cruise would never, but he should have considered it here, just as DiCaprio did. This is just not the type of movie that does well at the box office in the 2020s. Maybe that's sad, but it's no less true. And what's the point of putting a movie into 4,000 theaters just to have it lose a ton of money and garner bad buzz? For ego? For art? For theatrical quota commitments to seal deals?

Come on, if it's really about the art, it shouldn't matter if it's shown in a random AMC tiny theater versus at home. I know Hollywood believes that's part of the experience and magic, but it is only that way because there was no other way to distribute movies 100 years ago. Now there are.

One more thing: this is perhaps even more wild than the Digger misfire:

It is an extraordinary capper for a year that has been marred by misfires. None of Warner Bros.’ 2026 films has grossed more than $100 million, and “Supergirl” and “The Bride” both produced big losses for the studio.

None! After WB's insanely great 2025 at the box office with hit after hit, that's wild. Again, $100M isn't what it used to be. Many movies have opening weekends now above that mark – Warner Bros doesn't have a single one to gross that over an entire theatrical run this year yet. And certainly Digger won't be the first!

¹ Quite the contrast here with the movie that opened at #1 for the weekend in Verity. While it also doesn't have great reviews, what is does have is a natural fanbase to bring out to theaters in droves. Maybe Tom Cruise has some of that, but not like this. Verity will open with $33M for the weekend – on a budget of just $40M. Add in the $30M more it made overseas and, well, it's just math. As an aside: I could not believe when I read that Michael Showalter directed this film. He's done so great work since his days on The State but almost all of it is squarely comedic. This is quite a change of pace! Good for him. ↩