The actor posted a thank-you note to cast and crew even as Alejandro G. Iñárritu's $125 million satire earned a C+ CinemaScore and trailed Verity by tens of millions at the domestic box office.
Tom Cruise isn't ready to let Digger go quietly. The actor posted behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot on Saturday morning, a day after Warner Bros. Released the film in roughly 3,300 North American theatres and watched it stumble to an $8 million opening weekend.
"DIGGER is officially in theaters and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to create this film alongside such talented artists," Cruise wrote. "Thank you to the entire cast and crew for your dedication, hard work, and joy. The experience was truly unforgettable and I'm so proud of what we created."
The numbers tell a rougher story. Digger carried a $125 million budget and arrived with real awards ambitions, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and centred on an egotistical oil tycoon whose hubris triggers a natural disaster. Audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore. Critics were split too, with the film sitting at 51 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The Hollywood Reporter's chief critic David Rooney called it, in his review for the outlet, "dead and buried."
It's Cruise's weakest opening weekend since 2007's war drama Lions for Lambs, which debuted at $6.7 million off a far smaller budget. That comparison stings more given how far Digger swung in the other direction, physically transforming its biggest movie star into a portly, balding executive, a deliberate departure from the franchise action that's defined Cruise's last decade and a half.
The film is meant to recall his earlier run of filmmaker-driven work, the Rain Man and Magnolia era, before Mission: Impossible and Top Gun took over his calendar. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller round out the cast, and Warner Bros. Had reportedly positioned the project as a major creative swing it hoped would carry into awards season.
Saturday's post wasn't Cruise's first defence of the film this week. At a Los Angeles screening earlier in the week, he talked about chasing opportunity across a long career. "My hope is always that the films would do well enough that I would have that opportunity to do it again," he said. "People want to see real things. This career, we have to work to do it. It was never handed to any of us. I want you to know that."
Meanwhile the weekend's actual box office winner is Amazon MGM's Verity, the Anne Hathaway-led adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel, which is on track to open at the top of the domestic chart with around $33 million, more than four times what Digger managed.
Cruise isn't sticking around to nurse the numbers. Days of Thunder 2 is gearing up to start production soon, a return to the kind of franchise filmmaking Digger was supposed to be a break from. Whether Warner Bros. Keeps pushing the film into the awards conversation it was built for is the next thing worth watching, especially with a C+ CinemaScore working against any slow-burn word of mouth.
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