Tom Cruise’s Digger is stumbling into box office oblivion. Thursday previews in North America brought in just $1.2 million — below even The Creator’s $1.6 million and Mickey 17’s $2.5 million. That’s not a modest start. It’s a warning flare. The film, directed by Oscar-winner Alejandro González Iñárritu, follows the most powerful man in the world as he races to prove he’s humanity’s savior before the catastrophe he unleashed consumes everything. It was released on September 25. But the audience didn’t come. Not for the premise. Not for the star. Not for the director behind Birdman and The Revenant. The pre-sales were dull. The buzz evaporated fast. And now, projections have been slashed. The film is tracking to open between $9 million and $12 million in its first weekend across North America, well below earlier estimates. If confirmed, it would mark the weakest opening weekend for Tom Cruise in over ten years. Warner Bros. Could be facing its biggest box office failure since Joker 2. Critics aren’t offering comfort. Aggregates show poor to negative reviews. Some called it a stylized satire with an audacious visual approach. Others said its overly mannered execution undercut the jokes. One described it as less a love letter to cinema than a hate letter to life. And to its audience. The collaboration between Cruise and Iñárritu was once seen as a high-stakes artistic gamble. Now it looks like a misfire. The film required a full physical transformation from Cruise. That effort didn’t translate into traction. The trailers failed to spark interest. The marketing felt flat. The momentum stalled. Even the early reactions online were mixed, some saw ambition, others saw pretension. One reviewer wrote: “Mr. Movies makes a movie that’s less a love letter to the form and more a hate letter to life, cinema, art, and its own audience.” Another dismissed it as “something an AI would make.” A third compared it to Jodorowsky’s work. “once seen, never forgotten”, but not in a good way. The numbers don’t lie. The silence speaks louder. What happens next? Will WB pull it early? Can Cruise recover his streak? Or has this been the beginning of a shift. Where spectacle no longer guarantees success? The film’s fate is sealed. The real story is what comes after.