We already know "Digger" bombed: an $8M domestic opening, $20M worldwide, a C+ CinemaScore and Tom Cruise's worst start in 19 years. Deadline's sources now say losses will reach $150M, and that's assuming it makes $50M globally, which is no certainty.
However, the more interesting part of Deadline's report is the behind-the-scenes material, which included a few things I genuinely didn't know.
Apparently, "Digger" started at Netflix with Leonardo DiCaprio attached. It was under a different title, "Blah, Blah, Blah," and was developed around the time Iñárritu made "Bardo," so roughly 2021–2022. What killed it there? Netflix made "Don't Look Up," which was apparently too similar. Iñárritu then moved it to Warner Bros.
Reading between the lines, and it sounds like DiCaprio had a choice between two satires and picked Adam McKay's. "Don't Look Up" became one of Netflix's most-watched films, critics be damned, while Iñárritu's version wandered off to another studio, lost its star and kept growing.
What makes this even stranger is the finished film. As one Reddit user put it, "Digger" feels like the work of a director who saw "Don't Look Up," hated it, and made a movie that satirizes that whole brand of preachy political comedy. It's a bold, almost spiteful idea.
Warner Bros. greenlit the film at $125M, but the real number may be $160M–$180M. Even stranger, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy ran the project through their "comps model," which concluded that an Iñárritu–Cruise pairing was worth the risk. I find this puzzling. Why use a comps model when it's clear that, on paper, a project like this can't offer data-driven certainty?
Regardless, the film was made. The first cut ran about 160 minutes, roughly 30 minutes longer than the final version, and reportedly tested badly. A second screening of a version about half an hour shorter played much better. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. passed on Michael Mann's "Heat 2" when its budget reached $160M, the same figure as "Digger.”
I'm all for studios backing auteurs, and De Luca and Abdy deserve credit for taking swings, but when your data model approves "Digger" and rejects "Heat 2," something in the process is broken. Still, I haven't been shy about my affection for Iñárritu's film, which is a bold, singular creation. That it exists at all is the kind of miracle that gets the people who greenlit it fired, which is exactly what happened. Apparently, we have a comps model to thank for its existence.
Apparently, "Digger" started at Netflix with Leonardo DiCaprio attached. It was under a different title, "Blah, Blah, Blah," and was developed around the time Iñárritu made "Bardo.”