Digger Officially Becomes Tom Cruise’s Biggest Box-Office Flop After 19 Years

Tom Cruise’s Digger seems to be in a bit of a pickle, as the film failed to secure a good opening day. After receiving a C+ on CinemaScore, the 2026 film was expected to earn average box office numbers. However, the film has officially become Tom Cruise’s biggest box-office flop after 19 years!

With an estimated budget of $160-$180 million, Digger (which was released on October 2) earned a total of $8 million in domestic box office collections. Check out the tweet below:

‘DIGGER’ has opened with $8M domestically on a projected budget of $160M-$180M. Biggest Hollywood box office bomb of 2026 & one of the biggest bombs of all time. https://t.co/Hp6QtzqdUz

This marks Cruise’s biggest flop after 2007, when his Lions for Lambs opened to $6.7 million, via Box Office Mojo. With inflation, it would have been a little over $10 million today. This means that Tom Cruise’s Digger had the worst opening day in the actor’s career if you take inflation into consideration.

Tom Cruise’s Digger Becomes His Weakest Box Office Opening

Tom Cruise in a still from Digger | Credits: Legendary Pictures

The 2026 Alejandro Iñárritu film opened to $8 million despite an estimated budget of $160-$180 million. Although Lions for Lambs was considered Cruise’s worst earnings yet, the film only had a budget of $35 million back in 2007. Not to mention, his other risky flicks like Rock of Ages had a budget of $75 million but opened to $14 million (via Box Office Mojo).

Naturally, Digger just became Cruise’s costliest failure since the box office opening-to-budget ratio of the 2026 film is just too massive compared to Cruise’s other flicks.

Why Digger Failed to Find Theatrical Success Despite Tom Cruise

A still from Digger | Credits: Legendary Pictures

The 2026 film had always been a gamble. Being a film about an oil tycoon rushing to save the world from a catastrophe that he himself created, it was a hard sell, since audiences have known and loved him as an action star.

Early polarizing reviews noted that Cruise’s acting is quite diverse in the film and that he was on his wilder side. Alongside Cruise not having any action spectacles in the movie, word-of-mouth is limited because of polarized pre-sales reviews.

With a budget of $160-$180 million, even decent earnings would have been hard to turn the movie into a profitable, high-earning flick. Naturally, Digger had several odds stacked against it.

Do you think Tom Cruise’s Digger can turn a profit? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Digger is currently screening in theaters.