Alejandro González Iñárritu and Tom Cruise’s newest film, Digger is now out in theaters…..and playing in completely empty screenings. While I highly doubt anyone thought this would do Spider-Man: Brand New Day numbers, Digger is bombing at the box office in ways that very few films ever has before. With a budget that’s somewhere between $125 to $180 million dollars to a market campaign that did everything except explain what the actual plot of the film was, this is looking to be one of the biggest financial bombs in recent history, only grossing $8 million domestically and $20 million overall in it’s opening weekend. Considering all the other films that have crashed and burn since the 2020s have come around, Digger being among the worst of the worst is saying a LOT!
After seeing the film, it’s easy to see why this has not attract an audience whatsoever. It’s just really, REALLY bad! It’s certainly bad in a FASCINATING way and a bad film in a way that only an unconventional director like Alejandro González Iñárritu could possibly make, but it’s still bad all the same. Similar to what I say about Joker: Folie à Deux just two years ago, I can’t help but feel like this will be among the last “special” bad films we are ever going to get anytime soon. Not only because of how much money has been thrown at this with little to no satisfying box office results and it’s rather divisive critical reception but because of the massive black whale that is Paramount Skydance about to swallow up Warner Bros Discovery.
In case you haven’t heard, Paramount Skydance have been giving the full greenlight to purchase Warner Bros Discovery, anti-trust lawsuits and monopoly laws be damned! It’s believe that after tomorrow October 6th, the merger will be 100% completed and the faith of Warner Bros Discovery will be in the hands of CEO David Ellison, A.K.A. the father of Larry Ellison, A.K.A. the head of Oracle and the SECOND richest man in the world! Now strictly known as Skydance, Ellison is looking to use his recent purchases of Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros Discovery to conquer the movie industry and define how big films will be featured for the foreseeable future in Hollywood!
I can go into a million different reasons why this is horrifying beyond measures but put it simply, if you didn’t like it when Disney bought 21st Century Fox back in 2017, well you are almost certainly not gonna like a buyout that is basically the STEROIDS equivalent of that! While Ellison has constantly promised that the combination of Skydance, Paramount, and Warner Bros will help release up to 30 films a year, there is absolutely no guarantee of that happening giving the insane amount of debt that will be attached to the studio come Tuesday morning. And if we are going by the track record of 21st Century Studios since Disney bought them and David Ellison’s Hollywood resume as whole, that will mean far more focus on brand recognition and IP and far less on actual original projects like Digger!
And even though Digger is technically awful, it’s the kind of awful that only happens when a director with a complete vision helms the project without the higher ups at the studio weighing it down. It’s the kind of awful film that almost warrants seeing just to be a part of the conversation and NOT something that isn’t worth paying attention to because it’s the same old corporate slop that Hollywood has been serving for a long time. And best of all, it’s the kind of awful film that a studio head like Ellison wouldn’t greenlight in a million years because it’s ultimately a critique of people like him and why the world is in the dark, cynical place that’s it in right now due to people like him.
To further explain what I’m talking about, it’s time to go into full spoiler territory for Digger! If you haven’t seen the film and/or don’t want any spoilers, you might want to stop now and click off the article! You have been warned!
If anyone was wondering why the trailers didn’t show jacks**t about this entire film other than how Tom Cruise has been Hollywood Jesus for the past 40 years, that’s because in doing so would give away the big spoiler reveal/plot twist that is revealed after the initial reel. That twist being that none of the events happening in the movie is real!
Tom Cruise is NOT the actual titled character of Digger but just an actor named Curtis Markson playing the role of Digger Rockwell, a wealthy oil tycoon whose company causes a potential world-ending disaster in Greenland. The events that is shown throughout the entire film aren’t actually events that’s happening in real life but from a staged play titled Fossil Fools, a satirical Climate Change play about an event that played out that sunk the whole world to a complete and utter abyss and the incompetent clowns that were largely responsible for that. This is all taken place in a dystopian future where global disasters have already happened and AI and government officials have 100% taken over our lives as a result of it!
So, yeah! I think you can understand why they couldn’t show anything in the trailers. Not only because this would’ve given away what the film is actually about in ways that are beyond unsatisfying but this would’ve been the quickest way to turn any sane individual off from spending 15 to 20 dollars on a movie ticket to see in theaters. This ain’t a story where Tom Cruise gets to be Tom Cruise and dig his way through the whole mess that he caused, it’s a story where Tom Cruise imagines a “What If?” of an already happened scenario of him doing just that. (As a matter of fact, I don’t even think we get a single shot of the movie with Digger with an actual shovel outside of when he is in his pajamas!) This ain’t a film where a film where Alejandro González Iñárritu wants to use a black comedy satire to go into the ins and outs about global warming and climate change but wants to use a black comedy satire OF a black comedy satire that goes into the ins and outs about global warming and climate change.
The oddest part of all of this is the way the film continues to just trot along after revealing the big blockbuster after the first half hour of the film. It goes back and forth of Curtis doing rehearsals of Fossil Fools with Cruise doing his awkward accent that you’ve seen in the trailers and Curtis offstage drama with his wife and daughter, with Cruise going back to his normal voice. Even though the cat is out of the bag and the big magic bunny has already been pulled out of the hat, the film kinda acts like it never did that and still continues along with it’s full satire play is being played completely straight, with moments where it feels like Iñárritu has to come on camera and explain the themes of the movie, as if he doesn’t think his audience is smart enough to get it. It’s like Iñárritu watched Vice and Don’t Look Up on loop and thought, “Hold my beer!”
The closest thing we get to a real conflict with our main character Curtis is when we get updates of what’s going on with his daughter, whose plane she’s on disappeared on a radar because of a hurricane that transpires throughout the course of the film. And even then, that gets responded with a complete whole, “OH, SHE’S OKAY NOW, I GUESS!” and that’s it. You don’t even get to see Curtis reuniting with his daughter in person or even on the phone, we’re just told she’s okay at the end and because of that, everything is fine and daddy now…..until we are reveal in the last frame and in the credits that it’s totally not.
On one hand, it is admirable for Alejandro González Iñárritu to make a film that refuses to play by the rules and will almost certainly cause review bombings based on the kind of satire and individuals it is mocking. However, he still forgot to make an engaging film in it’s own right and one that works regardless if you look at it as a self-parody, political commentary, or just a good old piece of art in general. Once you known the big reveal of Digger and the point that Iñárritu is trying to get across, the rest of the film just feels…….pointless. When you nothing that is happening on screen is real and the only engaging conflict is resolved off screen, what exactly is there to invest in here other than Tom Cruise trying to become the first actor in history to win an Oscar AND a Razzie at the exact same time?!
Even if you buy into the factor about the movie being about how sometimes we need a comedic distraction to take our mind off of what’s happening in our world today, I don’t think it’s best to get that message across with a play that is about a big global disaster that occurs and the men that are directly responsible for it. Yes, it’s funny to watch great actors give comedically over-the-top bad performances to get the point across but it’s not so much laughing through tears of laughter but laughing because crying would hurt too much. But at least we get to laugh at all….I guess.
Yet again, I can’t help but feel like I’m gonna be nostalgic when these special kind of bad films don’t get made anymore from Warner Bros, or strictly now known as Skydance. Even taken away Ellison’s personal politics, a spectacular bomb such as Digger will only scare away studios from trying a failed experiment like this again and only resort to making your Days of Thunder 2 and Gremlins 2 for the foreseeable future. And unfortunately, you won’t always be able to count on YouTube filmmakers to pop out Iron Lung, Obsession, and Backrooms to say the day for originality in filmmaking.
With more and more mergers coming into fruition, more independent films such as Digger will become rarer and rarer! After acquisitions such as Disney buying Fox and Skydance buying Paramount and Warner Bros, it’s clear that studios are going to put the majority of their focus on pumping out big blockbusters films and less on smaller and more independent films. There will always be one or two of them that will be able to squeeze through the system (We did get Send Help from 21st Century Studios this year after all!) but for the most part, you are likely to get more Minecraft movies than you would films like Sinners and One Battle After Another. Holes will need to be filled to plug in that gape for fresh and original films to still be able to shine, providing that variety of selected films made for theaters that major studios aren’t bothering to invest in anymore. While I’m sure current independent film studios like A24 and Focus Feature will still keep that bright light glowing, I would not expect a massive studio like Skydance to focus on that anytime soon, especially with the insane amount of debt they will be in.
If Digger really does act as the final film to ever get the full Warner Bros logo and the last hoorah from prior WB co-chair heads Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca (who were responsible for the terrific 2025 for WB but a terrible 2026 so far), then at least it would be a fitting it to a legendary run from one of the greatest film studios in the history of cinema! Not because it’s a good movie but it’s probably the last good bad movie we will ever get from them. At least David Zaslav gets his half billion dollar retirement!
Also, my final rating on Digger:
