Tom Cruise’s Digger spent $100 million in marketing, to lose $250 million | Hollywood News

Digger’s box office collapse

Digger opened to $8 million in the US and $21 million worldwide, numbers that would be considered disappointing for a mid-budget thriller and are catastrophic for a film starring the biggest action star of his generation with a production budget reportedly between $163 and $173 million.

According to insiders cited by TheWrap, the film is not expected to exceed $40 million worldwide over its entire theatrical run. For a film that cost approximately $170 million to produce and another $100 million to market, a $40 million gross represents a recovery of roughly 15 percent of the total investment.

The production budget varied depending on the source. Multiple insiders put it at $173 million, though part of that figure was attributed to an unexpected insurance settlement during production. Another insider placed the final production cost at $163 million. The marketing budget, estimated at approximately $100 million, was driven largely by the cost of Cruise’s global press tour, which has been a signature element of every major Cruise release since the Mission: Impossible franchise established the actor as one of the most committed promotional travellers in the industry.

Unlike other major Warner Bros releases such as the Dune franchise, which typically involve financial partners to share the risk, Digger was fully financed by Warner Bros alone, which means the studio bears the entire loss without the cushion of co-financing arrangements that would normally distribute the damage across multiple entities.

Also Read: Digger movie review: After 30 years of defying gravity, Tom Cruise takes his biggest leap

About Digger

Digger is a satirical drama in which Cruise plays a wealthy oil magnate whose drilling operations trigger a global environmental catastrophe. The film, described as a darkly comic end-of-the-world satire, required Cruise to undergo a significant physical transformation. He appears in heavy prosthetics as a paunchy, balding billionaire who lives with a dying cat surrounded by taxidermied animals.

The transformation represented a radical departure from the image that has defined Cruise’s career for the past 15 years. Since the Mission: Impossible franchise repositioned him as an actor who performs his own death-defying stunts, Cruise’s appeal has been built almost entirely on physical heroism, athleticism and real-world danger. Digger asked audiences to accept a version of Cruise that had none of those qualities: overweight, unheroic, morally compromised and buried under prosthetics that made him nearly unrecognisable.

Digger was seen as a win for Warner Bros

The project was considered a major win for Warner Bros. when it was first announced. According to TheWrap, it was personally greenlit by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and was the first film under a new multi-picture deal with Cruise to make both original and franchise films with the studio.

Also Read: Digger: Tom Cruise and Hollywood are done saving the world; time to embrace the end

Pairing Cruise with Iñárritu, who is one of only three directors in Oscar history to win consecutive Best Director awards (for Birdman in 2015 and The Revenant in 2016), was seen as a prestige-commercial combination that could deliver both awards recognition and box office returns. On paper, it was exactly the kind of ambitious, star-driven, auteur-directed project that studios greenlight with confidence.

What’s next for Tom Cruise

Despite the Digger disaster, Cruise’s relationship with the newly combined Skydance-Paramount-Warner Bros. structure is expected to continue. His next project is Days of Thunder 2, a sequel to the 1990 film, which is scheduled to begin production next year under the Paramount banner. Anne Hathaway has been attached as co-star.