Tom Cruise put aside his action-hero persona and fell flat on his face at the box office.
The big-budget political satire “Digger,” in which the “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun” leading man plays multiple roles including a gleefully polluting oil tycoon, opened to an estimated $8 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to distributor Warner Bros.
That is the lowest opening for a film starring Cruise since the political drama “Lions for Lambs” in 2007, not adjusting for inflation. It is also one of the biggest bombs for any studio this year. Overseas, “Digger” grossed only $12 million.
The failure of the film—which cost about $125 million to make, according to the studio—is the latest evidence of how hard it is to get people to go to theaters for original films outside of the horror genre.
“Even with respectable ancillary income based on the film’s pedigree, the movie is going to lose a lot of money,” said film-industry analyst David A. Gross in his box-office newsletter FranchiseRe.
A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. declined to comment. Spokespeople for Cruise didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“Digger” is the final movie released by Warner Bros. before Paramount’s deal to acquire its parent company closes Tuesday. While Warner will be a division of the new company , which will be called Skydance , “Digger” marks the end of its 103-year run as a stand-alone studio.
For the past four years, Warner’s motion-picture division has pursued an unusual strategy of making costly bets on original ideas from critically acclaimed filmmakers such as “Digger” director Alejandro González Iñárritu , who won Academy Awards for “The Revenant” and “Birdman.”
Last year’s horror film “Sinners,” from “Black Panther” and “Creed” director Ryan Coogler , was a smash hit . “One Battle After Another,” from Paul Thomas Anderson , won numerous Oscars including best picture, but underperformed at the box office relative to its budget. Emerald Fennell’s February adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” performed decently. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!”—released in March—was a flop.
Warner in the past couple of years has also had traditional franchise films that succeeded (“A Minecraft Movie,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,”) and flopped (“Joker: Folie à Deux”).
The architects of the studio’s strategy, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca , aren’t staying with the company once its sale to Paramount closes, The Wall Street Journal has reported .
Warner Bros. leaned in to the polarized reviews in its marketing, encouraging audiences to make up their own minds. One online ad featured quotes from blistering reviews like “excruciatingly painful,” followed by Cruise’s character saying “You know what? F—those people!”
But audience responses were as mixed as those of critics. The average grade from opening-night attendees was a C+, according to market research firm CinemaScore.
Earlier in his career, Cruise regularly mixed roles in safer popcorn movies with riskier work by directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Michael Mann . But for the past 15 years, he has mostly stuck to action-adventure movies like “Top Gun: Maverick” and the “Mission: Impossible” series.
After a screening for Producers Guild of America members last week, Cruise described “Digger” as important for the future of original, auteur-driven moviemaking in Hollywood. “I hope the film does well so other people receive and make money, everyone gets Christmas bonuses, and then they can go on and other films like this can get made,” he said.
Write to Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com
