Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ Gets Pulled From Thousands of Theaters After Just Two Weeks

Some box office bombs fade quietly, and others make headlines all the way down. Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’, the satirical black comedy from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, falls squarely in the second camp. The Warner Bros. release opened in the US and UK on October 2 and has struggled to find an audience ever since.

The film had all the ingredients of a prestige event. Cruise, transformed beyond recognition, plays oil magnate Digger Rockwell alongside Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons. But it opened to just $8 million from 3,321 North American theaters, then fell an estimated 60% or more in its second weekend.

Now exhibitors are cutting their losses in dramatic fashion. Theaters are pulling ‘Digger’ from 2,535 locations ahead of this weekend, leaving it in just 786 venues in its third week, with most remaining theaters reportedly offering only 1 or 2 showtimes a day.

The size of the exodus is what’s turning heads. Studio releases typically get around 28 days in theaters, but ‘Digger’ is losing most of its footprint after just 2 weeks. World of Reel described the cut as one of the biggest week 2 to week 3 theater drops of all time for a major studio release. For a star-driven film from an Oscar-winning director, that’s a striking turn of events.

Exhibitors are taking ‘DIGGER’ out of 2,535 theaters ahead of this weekend. (via: @Luiz_Fernando_J) https://t.co/8RiDeKVAOi

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 15, 2026

The cut also reflects how crowded the multiplex has become. ‘Digger’ has been up against holdovers and new arrivals like ‘Other Mommy’, which topped last weekend’s box office, and ‘Verity’, ‘Resident Evil’ and ‘Heart of the Beast’, all competing for the same screens.

The financial picture is grim. Domestic grosses stood at roughly $14 million to $15 million after 2 weekends, with international ticket sales adding about $20 million. Budget estimates vary widely. Warner Bros. puts the film’s cost at $125 million, while Variety reported the studio spent above $160 million to produce it, and other estimates reach as high as $180 million. Those figures don’t include marketing.

TheWrap has projected the film’s total losses could reach around $250 million. That would place ‘Digger’ among the costliest flops in recent memory. Reviews didn’t give ‘Digger’ much of a lifeline either. The film holds a 46 on Metacritic and a 53% Rotten Tomatoes score, while opening-night audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore.

The story is an unusual sell for a studio blockbuster. Drilling in Alaska and Greenland triggers an ecological disaster, and the film eventually reveals itself as a rehearsal for a stage play called ‘Fossil Fools’, in which Cruise also plays the actor portraying Digger.

Digg. Or Die. DIGGER. Only in theaters October 2. https://t.co/jDCOyl8bXU

— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) July 13, 2026

That kind of ambition has earned it defenders, even as audiences stayed away. Plenty of fans online have argued that the film is being judged too harshly for taking a big creative swing.

One of the film’s most high-profile champions is Ben Affleck. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, he argued that piling on ‘Digger’ resembles high school bullying, and that punishing risky movies will only push studios toward safer, more homogenized films.

His comments struck a chord with some cinephiles who worry that big-budget original projects are becoming an endangered species. Others counter that a film costing well over $100 million has to find a much larger audience to justify itself.

Either way, the shrinking theater count makes clear how quickly the industry moves on from a perceived failure. Unless something changes, ‘Digger’ will likely find its second life on home viewing and streaming rather than in theaters.

With fewer than 800 venues left and limited showtimes in most of them, the film’s theatrical run is effectively winding down. Its final box office tally will likely end up far below what Warner Bros. hoped for when it premiered as the Royal Film Performance in London.

For Cruise, it’s a rare stumble in a career built on box office reliability. For Hollywood, it’s another flashpoint in the ongoing debate over whether studios should keep betting on bold, original filmmaking.

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