A new report suggests that Tom Cruise’s Digger could lose $250m – just as the Paramount-Warner merger could make original films more difficult to greenlight than ever.
Even with a name like Tom Cruise attached, Digger was always a big gamble. Here’s comedy-drama that isn’t a sequel or a reboot, that explores a topic that isn’t exactly box-office catnip (environmental collapse), and has both a style and a framing device that is difficult to explain in a trailer.
Then there was the budget: Warner Bros greenlit the film with a budget of $125m – which isn’t exactly Fast X money, but still expensive for an R-rated comedy.
Except, per a new report over at TheWrap, Digger’s budget wasn’t $125m – it was about a third higher than that. One source claims the price was $163m; another places it at $173m.
Throw in the marketing, said to be $100m, and the latest story is that Alejandro G Iñárritu’s apocalyptic satire will lose around $250m in cinemas; it made $21m worldwide on its opening weekend, and barring a sudden rally from movie-goers, its fortunes are unlikely to improve over the coming days.
TheWrap’s report says that Digger's true cost only came to light when Skydance, which acquired Warner Bros on Tuesday, sent its executives to the studio’s offices and started looking through the accounts.
Read more: Digger review | No, no – dig up, stupid
Whether that’s accurate or not, it highlights just how unfortunately timed this financial misfire is. Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner leaves the merged entity with an $80bn mountain of debt – something the company hopes to pay down with a mixture of redundancies, dubious AI-based efficiencies, and the urgent greenlighting of original properties.
We’ve already heard about a number of these sequels and reboots. Barbie 2, which was stalled for years over salary disputes, will now happen by hook or crook.
Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay are said to be returning to the Transformers franchise.
And Tom Cruise is heading back to slightly safer territory with the belated NASCAR sequel, Days Of Thunder 2, which its producers no doubt hope will have the same halo around it as Top Gun Maverick.
(Mind you, producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson hoped that Days Of Thunder would have the same halo around it as Top Gun back in the early 90s.)
Skydance CEO may be pledging that original movies will be greenlit, too, it’s inevitable that risk-averse executives and shareholders are going to plump for a familiar name rather than an untested idea. And if a filmmaker does come up with a risky yet ingenious script, then nervous execs can simply point to Digger as an excuse not to greenlight it.
In a media round this week, Ellison insisted that “You absolutely will see us tell original stories,” and pointed out that Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, released by Warner Bros last year, was one of his favourite movies. We can’t help wishing that Coogler’s film -an original film that earned Oscars and made money – could have swapped places with Digger, and been Warner’s parting shot instead.
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