‘Digger' Now Tracking at $12M Opening After Mixed First Reactions?

UPDATE: I've updated the range to $12M to reflect a less conservative outlook than the original projection. What can I say, I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy.

EARLIER: Remember last year when Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson tried his hand at serious, Oscar-buzzy acting with A24's "The Smashing Machine"? The only problem was that reviews for the $60M movie weren't good enough to build anticipation, and the result was a miserable $5.8M opening weekend.

I bring this up because I see parallels with what's currently happening with Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Digger," starring Tom Cruise in a rare non-franchise turn. The film was demolished, even mocked, by a wave of first reactions from critics on social media yesterday, on the same day tickets finally went on sale.

Puck's Matt Belloni has reported that NRG tracking puts the film's opening weekend in the $19M range. That's not good, especially since the budget, per Warner Bros., is around $125M, and that figure may not be accurate, as a handful of journalists have reported costs reaching $180M.

With all that in mind, The FlatLannister, a trusted tracker/user on Box Office Theory has now taken an extensive look at first-day ticket sales for "Digger," and, Houston, we have a problem.

"Digger" is off to a weaker start than anticipated in advance ticket sales. At one major theater chain, its opening weekend presales are about 34% behind where "The Drama" was at the same point, and about 35% behind "The Bride." "The Bride" had a $7.8M opening, and "The Drama," spurred by strong word of mouth, had major walkups, opening in the $14M range.

Based on these numbers, the tracker now sees around $10M as a realistic target for "Digger," and that rests on the rosy assumption that there's still plenty of time for sales to pick up before release. But will they? Reviews are expected to start pouring in on Tuesday, and there's little reason to believe most will be positive.

So what went wrong? The trailers have been off-putting, the film has a hard-to-sell satirical premise, and now there are these negative early reactions, which is a bad sign since first reactions tend to skew positive. I'm warning you now about all the articles that will be written claiming Cruise isn't a box office draw anymore, which couldn't be further from the truth. The problem here isn't Cruise. It's "Digger."