Welcome to the “Digger” megathread, where you can post your review of the movie in the comments below. I’ll try to keep this post up over the weekend as more of our readers catch up with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s $180M oddity.
As expected, “Digger” opened with just $1.2M in previews, soft across the board for a film that cost that much. For comparison, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” pulled $3M in previews last fall before a $22M opening. “Digger” will be lucky to crack $10M domestically this weekend.
On top of that gargantuan budget, the trades report that Warner Bros. spent another $100M on marketing. Do the math. “Digger” is on track to become one of the biggest box office bombs of our lifetime, with the potential to be a 21st-century “Heaven’s Gate.” Michael Cimino's notorious 1980 auteur folly infamously bankrupted United Artists and ended an era of directors being handed blank checks. The timing comes as word leaked that Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy won't be making the jump to the merged Paramount Warner Bros.
The reviews have been absolutely polarizing, more negative than positive. Audience scores are going to be disastrous — not necessarily a litmus test for quality, mind you. Unsurprisingly, folks are already trying to reappraise this film, and it hasn’t even been in theaters for 24 hours. IndieWire’s Jim Hemphill wrote an article with the headline “Dear 'Digger' Detractors: This Tom Cruise Masterpiece Will Stand the Test of Time” This is going to be “Babylon” 2.0 all over again.
If you’ve been keeping track, I absolutely dug “Digger.” It's a bewildering thing. A troll job masquerading as an Oscar contender, built around a twist 30 minutes in that the trailers never hinted at. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a Texas tycoon whose rig spill threatens global catastrophe, sending him on an over-the-top mission to save the world that includes a run-in with John Goodman's loopy, Coen-esque U.S. president.
This is a big, bold swing: pitch-black comedy, “Dr. Strangelove” filtered through 21st-century theatrics, with Lubezki's moody gray-toned photography, inventive production design, a jaw-dropping 10-minute oner and a terrific Tom Cruise. I hated “Bardo,” and some are calling “Digger” ponderous and pretentious too, but I found it gutsy and unapologetic, a schizoid, messy oddity that takes itself far too seriously and not seriously at all. A fascinating watch.
Now it's your turn. Did “Digger” work for you, or is this Iñárritu at his most insufferable? Is it a misunderstood cult classic in the making, or a $180M folly destined to be remembered as one of the great studio follies? Sound off below.
NOTE: “Verity,” starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, pulled in almost four times as much, grossing $4.5M in Thursday previews, which is right where it needed to be for what is arguably Colleen Hoover‘s second most popular novel to hit the screen after “It Ends With Us.” That's below the $7 million in previews “It Ends With Us” posted on its way to a $50M opening, but comfortably ahead of the $1.9M “Reminders of Him” managed earlier this year before a $18M debut. “Verity” is now looking at a $30M+ opening weekend.
The third instalment, often referred to as “Sicario: Capos,” has been in the works since 2018. Two years ago, producers confirmed that a script had been partially written, and the idea was “awesome.”