Ben Affleck Defends 'Digger': Punish Risk-Takers and Get 'Homogenized Movies'

Ben Affleck says mocking Tom Cruise's "Digger" will cost Hollywood its nerve. Speaking on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, he argued that publicly celebrating the film's box-office collapse only pushes studios toward what he bluntly called "shitty homogenized movies."

"Digger" needs no introduction to anyone tracking the numbers. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's film has earned $15 million domestically since opening Oct. 2, against a production budget north of $160 million and a marketing spend pegged at $100 million. Variety's latest report puts the likely loss to Warner Bros. at around $245 million — one of the costliest flops in the studio's history. That's not a stumble. That's a crater.

What did Affleck actually say?

The actor compared the pile-on to schoolyard cruelty from people who never bought a ticket.

"It's a little bit like the high-school bullying thing, with people who hadn't even seen movies," Affleck said. "Everybody wants to count the money, what it lost or whatever. To me, I just think, if you punish movies that take risks, guess what you're going to get? A bunch of shitty homogenized movies."

His logic is simple. Ambition sometimes lands badly.

"You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing," he said. "And that means you're going to sometimes look bad."

Affleck knows the terrain. He has weathered his own flops across a decades-long career. He also called "Digger" "a pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people who have talent."

For context: "Digger" stars Cruise as an oil tycoon facing the end of the world after an Antarctic rig malfunction sends ice caps hurtling toward Europe. Critics split on it — 53% on Rotten Tomatoes (the review-aggregation score averaging critics' verdicts).

Who else is rallying to the film?

Affleck joins a small but loud chorus of defenders. Neil Young posted on his website that "Digger" is "the best film I have ever seen."

"None of the reviews I have read describe this film adequately, in my opinion," Young wrote. "It cannot be seen as a Tom Cruise film – that would be misleading. I would describe it as a film of our times… it is an artful film of our times."

Mandy Patinkin, the Tony-winning "Homeland" star, went further, calling it an "instant classic" and "one of the greatest pieces of film I have ever seen in my entire life." Anne Hathaway logged a verdict on Letterboxd (the film-rating social platform): "It's smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious… For me? 10/10."

Does goodwill matter against $245 million?

Probably not at the box office. But Affleck's argument isn't about rescuing this film's receipts — it's about the next greenlight meeting, where a $245 million write-down speaks louder than a Neil Young love letter. If studios conclude that risk equals ruin, the swing gets smaller. That, in Affleck's telling, is the real bomb.