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Four years ago, Tom Cruise was declared a box office savior. Now he faces one of the biggest blunders in recent memory.
At a time when it was unclear whether movie theaters would survive the cultural and economic upheaval caused by COVID-19, “Top Gun: Maverick” soared to nearly $1.5 billion as audiences around the world flocked to see him reprise his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the fighter pilot who cemented him as a movie star in the 1980s.
But this weekend, Cruise suffered his worst opening weekend at the box office in 19 years with Warner Bros./Legendary’s “Digger,” a film that focused much of its marketing on his star power, only for audiences to largely reject the offer to see him swap out his Navy pilot suit for garish pajamas, bolo ties and old-man makeup. Digger Rockwell, a Texas oilman promoting a Texas oilman.
A $20 million global opening against a $125 million+ budget before marketing leaves Warner Bros. with a likely $150 million plus loss. Its $8 million domestic opening is the third-worst opening for a Cruise-starring film that opened in more than 1,000 locations, and is among the 20 lowest openings for a film with at least 3,300 locations.
Between “Maverick” and the “Mission: Impossible” movies, Cruise had built his reputation as a box office titan by doing his own death-defying stunts, promising moviegoers not just an escape, but a brand of escape that was completely unique to him. The masses could put aside the problems of reality for two hours to watch this actor cling to planes and ride motorcycles off cliffs knowing he wasn’t doing it with the help of a green screen.
Not only does “Digger” lack such escapism, but writer-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu takes a hard look at how such escapism in the movies, even when it is minimized by those in power, hinders the possibility of meaningful social change. The combination of Cruise was different than what audiences had seen in 15 years, a conventional concept that was off-putting to many potential moviegoers and a budget that made the success of the bar too high contributed to it falling so quickly.
“The name Tom Cruise can’t turn this scrappy, structured satire into a quadruple film.”
The marketing
The “Digger” campaign kicked off with a cryptic teaser of a silhouetted, balding Cruise dancing with a shovel and promising a “comedy of catastrophic proportions.” Months later, it was followed by a trailer that contained only about 15 seconds of Cruise footage from the film, instead showing a montage of the actor’s work in “Top Gun,” “A Few Good Men,” and other films from his four-year career.
It was clear that Warner Bros. was going to sell “Digger” on his main one, but the teaser deliberately hid it. Finally, just before the release of “The Odyssey”, the first proper trailer came out and revealed to the general public what the movie was about…
It showed a balding, Texas-twanged Cruise barking at a scientist warning that a methane explosion is about to turn Greenland’s oil Digger Rockwell into a climate disaster. Clips of that disaster were circulated by John Goodman as the loudmouth President of the United States, and lines from Cruise like “If we can’t control the course of nature, we can at least control the narrative” made Iñárritu aim to satirize our gift defined by MAGA completely clear.
And perhaps it was with that trailer, 11 weeks after its release, that the strategy for selling “Digger” fell off Cruise. The actor may receive his fourth Oscar nomination thanks to his total commitment to playing the title; but playing a character more reminiscent of Elon Musk than Ethan Hunt didn’t attract the big crowds that showed up for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” last year.
After 15 years of promising audiences that if they went to a Tom Cruise movie, they would see the A-lister perform real, death-defying stunts, “Digger” wanted them to show up to watch Cruise in heavy prosthetics inhabit an exaggerated character in a two-and-a-half-hour diatribe on climate change.
“‘Digger’ is the equivalent of a fine dining restaurant, and with his top-grossing movies, Tom Cruise has offered the cinematic equivalent of a burger,” said Rentrak analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “He has a role against his image in films like ‘Tropic Thunder,’ but it was only a cameo. Here he was expected to carry the film in such an unconventional role.”
A solid concept
Movies that have been specifically about current events or difficult issues have been selling big in theaters over the past few years. The 2022 journalistic drama “She Said”, which described the investigation that brought down Harvey Weinstein, was a much cheaper production than “Digger” with a budget of $32 million, but it was also a bomb, with only $13.9 million worldwide.
“Origin,” Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s famous novel about the history of caste systems and their connection to the history of bigotry, received only a limited release that produced only $4.8 million at the box office. Too heavy? How about Boots Riley’s “I Love Boosters”, a far more absurd and optimistic satire than “Digger” that urges the working class to organize against the Digger Rockwells of the world? It opened to strong reviews in 1,750 locations earlier this year and grossed just $9.7 million, about half of Riley’s 2018 directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You.
Next week, Sony Pictures will introduce “The Social Reckoning,” Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to “The Social Network” that takes a much more cautious approach to Mark Zuckerberg and social media. But while “The Social Network” opened to $22.7 million in 2010 and made $225 million worldwide, “The Social Reckoning” is eyeing a possibly lower opening than “Digger” as projections top out at $7 million.
And then there’s the documentary space, where the Trump-friendly “Melania” got wide exposure and made $16.6 million — enough to make it the top-grossing non-musical doc of the 2020s — while socially minded docs struggle to find any kind of theatrical release. “NAZA,” the acclaimed investigative doc about the IDF’s actions in Gaza, has made just over $85,000 over five days since its exclusive release at the IFC Center in New York. It will open in select cities on October 9, but will receive no more than a limited self-distribution release before being released for free on The Guardian’s website later this fall.
Simply put, audiences aren’t showing up to see these types of movies right now.
Against all this, a big-budget film about a melting arctic, rising sea levels and the climate apocalypse caused by our use of fossil fuels faced an uphill battle regardless of the actor who played the lead.
There is, in fact, one film that has succeeded in this trend to some extent, and ironically, it is another film from Warner Bros.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s film came out in the middle of the Trump Administration’s national deportation spree, featuring an immigration enforcement attack on a sanctuary city in California as a focal point and it never shies away from its political statement.
Crucially, however, his marketing was less specifically linked to the socio-political events of the day. While “One Battle” needed the post-theatrical income with awards to turn a profit (it came to $ 213 million worldwide against a budget of $ 130 million), the film had its own amazing chase sequences and a leading performance by Leonardo DiCaprio who committed himself to a wider range of roles at the height of his drawing power, including the Iñárritu film, which received a record time waiting for him. Oscar.
In contrast, seven of Cruise’s top 10 movies at the box office are “Mission: Impossible” movies, except for “Top Gun: Maverick,” “The War of the Worlds” and “The Last Samurai,” all movies full of edge-of-your-seat fun and Cruise as his self-portrait and bombshell.
In fact, if you comb through Cruise’s filmography for a dramatic, stunt-less role that reached the box office levels that would have marked a theatrical success for “Digger,” the only one that comes up is his supporting role opposite Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” which made $354 million in 1988.
“We’ve seen actors take big moves in roles that are outside of their comfort zone. Dwayne Johnson’s ‘The Smashing Machine’ is a recent example.
Under De Luca and Abdy, Warner Bros. did not refuse. The opportunity to show Cruise in a way that audiences have never seen before in a dark satire of our future and very capable that features an Oscar-winning cinematographer working with VistaVision and a high-dollar production design is right up the alley for a special breed of die-hard cinema lovers.
But it was Cruise’s involvement that gave this film any hope of making money back, and as this weekend showed, the connection between those cinemas and the global fans who want to see him run over buildings rather than playing grumpy old tycoons is very thin. Judging by the C + on CinemaScore and the “definite recommendation” rating of 47% on PostTrak, even less appreciated Iñárritu’s willingness to lead in the dystopian future that could bring our climate crisis without any relief.
As for Cruise’s banking, it’s far too early to say if there’s any long-term damage. His next big project will bring him back to the world of legacy series with a follow-up to his 1990 NASCAR drama “Days of Thunder” with co-star Anne Hathaway. Just as the original “Days of Thunder” was made in an attempt to repeat the success of “Top Gun” – to mediocre results – so this film will also look to some of the magic of the box office that “Top Gun: Maverick” captured in 2022.
“When you’re a superstar performer like Cruise, you have the opportunity to play roles that are very different from what you’re known for and show a different side of your talent.
But when Digger Rockwell was given, most moviegoers decided that if they wanted to watch a billionaire as the ruler of the world, they could turn the news.
