Digger Flops as Del Toro and Cuarón Rally Round Iñárritu
Tom Cruise's satire Digger has taken just $20 million around the world and may lose $150 million after a brutal opening, The Guardian reported.
That is a hard landing. The loss, if it holds, would rank among the largest theatrical shortfalls of recent years.
The numbers are stark. Digger grossed an estimated $8 million in its domestic opening weekend, meaning the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates reported on 3 October by The New York Times. Its production budget has been estimated as high as $180 million, The Hollywood Reporter reported on 5 October.
The film is directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and stars Cruise. It is Warner Bros.' last release before a merger, the Times reported.
As the grosses sank, two old friends stepped in. Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón publicly backed Iñárritu, the other two members of Mexico's celebrated directing trio known as the Three Amigos, the Reporter said.
Del Toro praised Digger for its ambition and theatrical scale. He also criticised an IGN post that suggested cinemagoers save money and wait to stream the film, calling that advice "entirely petty."
Cuarón took a different tack. He posted old, savage contemporary reviews of Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metropolis and The Shining as Digger struggled for an audience.
The shorthand has a long history. Cuarón and del Toro met in Mexico's film and television world in the late 1980s around Televisa's horror anthology La Hora Marcada, with cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki also in that orbit. Iñárritu met Cuarón in the mid-1990s when Cuarón was already working in Hollywood.
In 2007 the three formed Cha Cha Cha Films and struck a production deal with Universal. Then came an awards run with few parallels. Beginning with Cuarón's win for Gravity in 2014, the Three Amigos won the directing Oscar five times in six years: Cuarón twice, Iñárritu twice and del Toro once.
They also know how to make money at very different budget levels. Birdman was made for roughly $18 million and grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Del Toro's The Shape of Water cost roughly $20 million and approached $200 million. Cuarón's Gravity cost more than $100 million and grossed roughly $700 million. Iñárritu's The Revenant cost $135 million and made more than $530 million.
Digger is Iñárritu's first Hollywood studio film since The Revenant. His intervening feature, the 2022 Spanish-language Bardo, was a Netflix release. Cruise himself publicly defended Digger during its opening weekend, The Hollywood Reporter reported on 3 October.
What makes this stand out is the loyalty on display. For fans, this means the box-office story is now also a friendship story, with two Oscar winners using their own platforms to argue that opening weekends do not settle a film's fate.
