Digger Officially Delivers Tom Cruise His Biggest Loss of 2026

Digger has given Tom Cruise a disappointing verdict from opening-night audiences. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dark comedy earned a C+ CinemaScore (via CinemaScore). That has added to the pressure on an expensive original film that already faced, let’s say, soft box-office expectations. This is saying something, especially for someone who is often referred to as the last movie star. His name is supposed to get people into theaters. So, this is rather uncomfortable.

The grade is also unusually low by Cruise’s own standards. Digger is tied for the fifth-lowest CinemaScore of his career (along with 1986’s Legend) and has his lowest result in the past decade. Audiences do not seem any more united behind his latest gamble than critics were. Interestingly, it has the same CinemaScore as Verity, the Colleen Hoover adaptation that also released this week. Here are the 5 movies with the lowest CinemaScores.

Digger’s C+ CinemaScore Is the Fifth Lowest of Tom Cruise’s Career

Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell in Digger | Credits: Warner Bros. Pictures

The movie shares its CinemaScore with Legend, making it joint fifth-lowest among Cruise’s films with reported CinemaScores. Only Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, Magnolia, and Lions for Lambs received lower grades. The ranking puts his latest film among his most divisive theatrical releases. It must be said that the titles surrounding it also demonstrate why audience polling should not be mistaken for a judgment of artistic worth. His movie with the worst Cinemascore, for instance, is Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, which scored D-. The final movie of Kubrick’s career, it was released after his death and proved to be divisive for its surrealist tone. 

The last-decade comparison is less forgiving. The Mummy, which killed an entire cinematic universe before it could come into being (Universal’s Dark Universe) earned a B-. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and American Made received B+. Mission: Impossible – Fallout and Dead Reckoning both scored an A, followed by The Final Reckoning’s A-. Digger’s C+ sits below all of them.

The movie has also divided critics, earning 52% on Tomatometer, as of October 3. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a powerful man trying to save humanity from a catastrophe he caused. It is an intriguing variation on the actor’s familiar role as the person everyone depends on when disaster strikes. Here, that supposed savior is responsible for the problem in the first place. 

FandomWire’s Digger review, though, was positive. It read that the movie “is a massive, goofy, and striking climate change allegory that succeeds on the back of an explosive Tom Cruise performance and phenomenal world-building.”

But appreciation from enthusiastic supporters does not guarantee broad appeal. For Digger, the question is whether those supporters can persuade enough people to give an expensive, unconventional comedy a chance.

Tom Cruise’s Digger Faces an Uphill Battle at the Box Office

The early numbers underline the difficulty. According to The Numbers, Digger collected $1.2 million from October 1 previews against its $125 million production budget. Preview receipts are only part of the opening picture, but they hardly suggest overwhelming demand. 

The CinemaScore is commercially significant, for it indicates whether the general audience response is positive or negative. A modest opening is easier to recover from when early viewers leave eager to recommend the film. This movie cannot confidently count on that response, making its prospects more difficult than the opening forecast alone suggests.

The scale of the investment also matters. The movie was produced for as much as $180 million (via Variety). A film can find a devoted audience and still fail financially if its budget requires considerably broader support. Cruise’s involvement may have helped make an ambitious original production possible. But his name cannot guarantee that audiences will embrace the finished movie.

A final financial loss cannot yet be calculated. For now, the movie has delivered a clear audience-reception setback and faces a difficult theatrical run. Whether it eventually earns a better reputation is a separate question from whether Warner Bros. can recover its investment.

Does this movie deserve its C+ CinemaScore, or are audiences being too harsh on Cruise’s latest gamble? Let us know in the comments.