With Paramount taking ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery next week, WB’s final film in its 103-year history as a standalone studio will be “Digger,” a satire from five-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu starring Tom Cruise as a decrepit Texas oil tycoon who must save the world from the climate apocalypse he started.
But as it approaches release this Friday, its opening weekend outlook might be best described with a line from the film rumbled by John Goodman, who plays the loudmouth President of the United States: “Gentlemen, we find ourselves in one dildo of a pickle.”
In the runup to release, independent projections for the opening weekend of “Digger” have not exceeded $20 million, running below the $22 million that Warner Bros.’ Best Picture winner “One Battle After Another” opened to last year. Theatrical sources told TheWrap that with three days left before release, presales for the opening day of “Digger” are roughly half of what “One Battle” earned up to this point.
Warner Bros. is projecting a $12-15 million opening with the hopes that Cruise’s lead performance will fuel legs that will last through the awards season.
But critics will not be a boost as they are firmly divided on “Digger,” with some praising Cruise’s lead performance and the film’s biting satire while others are panning it for its dead-on-arrival humor. At time of writing, the movie has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 50% with 127 reviews logged. While TimeOut critic Philip De Semlyen said he “lapped up every bonkers moment,” TheWrap critic William Bibbiani eviscerated it as “self-adulating claptrap.”
Like “One Battle After Another,” Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!,” Warner Bros. spared no expense to allow Iñárritu to fulfill his cinematic vision. Every dollar of the $125 million budget is on the screen as the film features VistaVision cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, lavish production design, detailed costume and makeup design to turn the photogenic Cruise into the balding, unsightly Digger Rockwell, an animatronic half-dead cat and a loaded A-list cast.
For months, Warner Bros. has positioned “Digger” as one of their awards plays alongside December’s surefire box office hit “Dune: Part Three,” with particular hopes of landing Cruise his fourth acting Oscar nomination. To that end, much of the marketing has centered around him, including a teaser that offered the first public glimpse of him as Digger that began with a montage of his most famous performances from “Top Gun” and “A Few Good Men” to “Mission: Impossible” and “Jerry Maguire.”
But whereas “Sinners” proved to be a lucrative bet on talent, and “One Battle After Another” at least became director Paul Thomas Anderson’s highest grossing film ever with $213 million worldwide, “Digger” would need immense box office legs just to match “OBAA,” let alone reach half of the global total of Iñárritu’s career best release “The Revenant,” which made $533 million in 2015.
With the bad buzz piling up, Warner Bros. is steering into the skid, posting quotes from critics that range from “insufferable” to “magnificent” and urging moviegoers to “Decide for Yourself” in an ad released after several days of social media discussion from critics and timed to the dropping of the film’s review embargo.
At a time when moviegoers have proven to be very selective when choosing what to buy tickets for and have the option to “decide for themselves” to wait until a polarizing film comes out on streaming, that marketing might not get many beyond the most devoted cinephiles to give “Digger” a try in theaters.
But if they do, audiences will be in for several surprises that have been well hidden by the film’s marketing campaign and which dramatically recontextualize the apocalyptic story seen in the trailers, a choice that Iñárritu and Warner Bros. made to maximize the impact of those big reveals for moviegoers.
Some critics have already revealed these twists in their dissection of the film, but how those unaware of it react when they see it unfold will be key to the film’s word-of-mouth.
“Digger” is also coming out at a time when several other films are crowding different, adult-driven lanes at the box office. For conservative audiences who won’t care for Iñárritu’s more liberal-minded commentary, there’s the Brad Pitt survival thriller “Heart of the Beast.” Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil,” while suffering a 60% second weekend drop thanks in part to competition from “Avengers: Endgame Encore,” is still a well-reviewed horror film for anyone looking to get in the Halloween spirit early.
There’s also Amazon MGM’s “Verity,” the latest Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, which is expected to take the No. 1 spot this weekend thanks to strong female turnout with an opening weekend of $35 million-plus.
And for the prestige film lovers who would make up the core audience for “Digger,” there’s A24’s “Primetime,” a film that “Digger” is also pacing behind in presales, and Amazon MGM’s “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” which stars Mahershala Ali and is currently in limited release with a nationwide expansion to come in October.
Usually when there are this many films dividing up the overall moviegoing populace, there’s at least one movie that gets squeezed out. If “Digger” becomes that film, it will join a slew of pricey Warner misfires in 2026 like “The Bride!,” “Supergirl” and “The End of Oak Street” as the studio turns to a Q4 slate that are likely to end the studio’s slump.
But of course, DC’s “Clayface” in late October and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s “The Cat in the Hat” in November are likely to be inherited by Paramount as the merger will close mere days after “Digger” hits theaters.
