Sometimes, when a big movie fails spectacularly, there is a sense of schadenfreude. This usually comes when, in the run-up to the release, the publicity has featured a parade of hatched-faced harridans smugly femsplaining how this thing you have dearly loved since childhood isn’t yours anymore. So it is always amusing when their mythical new audience has failed to turn up. There is none of this with Digger.
For a start, it features Tom Cruise. The man is credited by Spielberg with saving cinema, post-COVID, with Top Gun: Maverick. He is so incapable of phoning it in, that he doesn’t even know what a phone is. So ever-present is his A-game that the rest of the alphabet is merely a suggestion to him. Nobody wants to see arguably our last real movie star fail just for the yucks.
All this goodwill hasn’t helped with Digger, though. The numbers were bad. Then they got worse. Then the release happened, and they were even worse than that.
We hope David Zaslav has cashed that Paramount check fast, because a report at The Wrap says the financial picture is way worse than anyone feared and has only started to come to light as Skydance open the books completely on Warner productions.
Digger is now looking at a potential $250 million loss. This is John Carter and The Lone Ranger territory, and double previous reports. Important to note, this loss includes post-theatrical revenue streams. Bad, bad box office ju-ju.
With a disastrous $21 million worldwide take on opening, Skydance analysts now say the movie will struggle to break $40 million vs. a production budget that is now said to be as high as $173 million, with a $100 million marketing budget on top. Then there are points, distributor fees, theater shares.
The kicker – Warner Bros. Pictures fully financed Digger with no financial partners and finance houses shouldering the load.
Ooopsie!
