How ‘Digger’ Turned Into The Biggest Flop In Movie History

$245 million. That is how much Digger (2026) is expected to lose Warner Bros. by the end of its theatrical run. It has turned into a colossal failure on a scale not seen since The Marvels (2023) or even John Carter (2012). Unadjusted for inflation, it is set to become the biggest box-office bomb of all time, the kind of failure cinephiles will dissect for years as nothing more than a pure, unmitigated catastrophe.

So what happened? How did Digger become this soon-to-be legendary failure? Because, for as divisive as it is, people do love it. They love how unafraid and ambitious it is and marvel at the sheer scale of the production. Tom Cruise, John Goodman, and Riz Ahmed all give Oscar-worthy performances, and yet they may not be recognized, thanks to the film crashing harder and faster than an asteroid. While we probably won’t know the full scope of the hows and whys for years to come, here’s what we can piece together. 

Why Did ‘Digger’ Have Such A Large Budget?

From its inception, and following the completion of Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant (2015), Digger was always meant to be a big film cut from the same cloth. The film had a $125 million budget, and considering how The Revenant had a comparable budget and made over half a billion dollars, the executives at Warner Bros. trusted Iñárritu to make lighting strike twice with a similar-sized budget.

Reality had different ideas for Digger. The film had a lengthy six-month production cycle that ended in May of 2024—slightly behind schedule—but the budget slowly but surely ballooned to approximately $180 million. Anyone who has seen Digger can tell you the movie's sheer scale is staggering, with complex visual effects sequences and opulent, gargantuan sets, and most of the film’s budget went to bringing these sets to life.

That, and the film was shot in VistaVision, much like The Brutalist (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025). That may not mean much to the casual filmgoer, but for movie buffs, it means that the film quality is significantly higher than the average movie, but it comes at a cost, resulting in an extended editing and post-production schedule that costs a few extra million. That’s not even getting into Digger’s marketing, which included a section carved out for an Oscar campaign that, at the time, probably seemed like a good idea, but now seems all but pointless. Altogether, Digger needed to make $300 million to break even. That’s not happening any time soon.

Why Didn’t People Show Up For ‘Digger’?

So we know how Digger managed to increase its budget, but in theory, that shouldn’t matter. Plenty of movie budgets balloon, and yet they still manage to turn a profit. So why aren’t people showing up to Digger?

Because, to the film’s credit, it didn’t release against any major competition. It released at the beginning of October, and while audiences were flocking to theaters to see movies like Resident Evil (2026), it didn’t have any Oscar competition outside of Primetime (2026), which released the week before and only took home $2.5 million the week of Digger’s release.

No matter how you slice it, it all comes down to marketing. Outside of a brief teaser released a year before, most people’s first introduction to Digger wasn’t through an extended trailer showcasing the film’s plot or characters, but a three-plus-minute look at Tom Cruise. That “trailer” showed Cruise as an actor with a storied and legendary career, which is true, but it utterly failed at selling what Digger was. A part of this was definitely intentional, as Iñárritu didn’t want the film’s bonkers plot leaking, but that also left audiences completely in the dark about what it was about and why they should care.

The nail in the coffin was the critical reviews, which were all over the place. Some outlets heralded it as a cinematic masterpiece, while others compared it to Megalopolis (2024). Warner Bros. attempted to lean into that division, with a few trailers following the film’s release boldly declaring audiences to see the movie and “decide for themselves,” but that didn’t translate into butts in seats. Shockingly, telling prospective viewers that the movie they’re about to see could be awful doesn’t instill confidence. With hindsight, it makes total sense why Digger failed. It may be bold and audacious, and probably one of the best movies of the year, but it’s also a complete and utter disaster.