Hollywood Rallies Behind 'Digger' After $8 Million Debut

By Daniel Okafor

Tom Cruise's "Digger" opened to a disastrous $8 million domestically, and Hollywood has decided that's the audience's problem. In the week since release, Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro, Mandy Patinkin and Glen Powell have all taken to social media to defend a film now tracking toward a loss of $150 million to $200 million theatrically.

Del Toro set the tone on X with five words that will likely outlive the film's box office run: "Love the arts. Fuck the charts."

A punchy credo. Also, admittedly, easier to post than to finance.

What did the stars actually say?

Hathaway reviewed the film on Letterboxd with a perfect score. "I loved this brilliant movie. It's smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious," she wrote. "It's worth making the time see and decide for yourself what you make of it. For me? 10/10."

Patinkin went further. He called "Digger" an "instant classic" and "one of the greatest pieces of film I have ever seen in my entire life" — heady territory for a movie one week old. He didn't stop there: "This is an incredible piece of work. It puts the heart and soul back into the cinema. Everything we all love about cinema, this is it. Please, please, please, run! Don't walk, run, and see this film."

Fonda addressed Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu directly, urging them to "keep being brave."

"The film allows us to witness another side of Tom Cruise's courage," Fonda wrote on Instagram. "It was a big, brave risk for him to take on this role and he was very good in it and very brave. He went all out, 100% owning the part… The film finds an original and, yes, risky way to wake us up about the climate crisis and I hope and pray word of mouth will bring folks into this film because it is far out creatively and closer to the truth than any such film made thus far. Hugs, kisses and bravissimo to all involved."

That's three uses of "brave" in one post. Fonda is not subtle. Neither, it turns out, is the film.

How bad is the damage?

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Variety reports the production budget landed between $160 million and $180 million, with a further $100 million spent on marketing. The break-even point sits at roughly $350 million worldwide.

The global opening brought in $20 million.

That gap makes "Digger" one of the biggest studio bombs in movie history, a comparison the film would presumably rather not carry into awards season. Industry projections now put the theatrical loss at $150 million to $200 million.

What is 'Digger' about?

The film was widely touted as Cruise's first non-action role in nearly a decade. He plays Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon confronting the end of the world after one of his rigs in Antarctica malfunctions, sending ice caps hurtling toward Europe.

So: a climate parable with a nine-figure price tag. Reviews split sharply — some critics hail it as a masterpiece, others pan it as an insufferable misfire. Rarely does a film manage to inspire both Patinkin's ecstasy and an $8 million opening. "Digger" achieved that in a single weekend.

Cruise himself posted during opening weekend, striking a note somewhere between gratitude and defiance. "Thank you to the entire cast and crew for your dedication, hard work and joy," he wrote. "The experience was truly unforgettable and I'm so proud of what we created."

Does celebrity advocacy move box office numbers?

History suggests not much. But that may not be the point. What the campaign signals is an industry unsettled by the gap between critical passion and commercial collapse — a film endorsed by an Oscar winner, a horror auteur and Jane Fonda, abandoned by ticket buyers in week one.

Word of mouth, as Fonda hopes, could still narrow the losses. The more likely verdict: the charts win, the arts post their tributes, and "Digger" becomes the season's defining argument about what audiences actually reward.