Digger: $200 Million Budget? Financial Risk?
SPOILER ALERT, but one of my most anticipated films for the big half of 2026 is Tom Cruise’s upcoming film Digger directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Recent reports have come out discussing the film’s budget, which could be reaching $200 million. Because of this, I feel like there is some interesting news to talk about and my thoughts related to this topic!
What Is Digger?: If you do not know what this movie is, this is the latest film from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who previously directed Birdman and The Revenant. The film stars Tom Cruise, who is doing something quite different and doing a full-blown comedy with major prosthetics. This is the description of the film based on IMDB “The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster; he’s unleashed and destroys everything.” The film also stars Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, and Jesse Plemons. This is one that a lot of people are talking about simply because it is Tom Cruise and he is not doing a big franchise film and doing something different.
My Thoughts
In the report, it is from reports from some film journalists talking about it. I am not sure how true or exact this is, but the sources seem reliable enough, so I wanted to talk about it. The report is saying that film journalist Matt Belloni heard from a WB representative that Digger’s budget is about $125 million, but somebody else was saying that the budget is closer to $200 million. While the budget is not entirely clear right now, it sounds like the budget is somewhere between $125 million and $200 million, so take that as you will.
What do I make of this? I am very curious to see just how well this movie is going to do at the box office. I honestly have no idea if Digger is going to be a box office hit or if that is going to flop. If we look at Iñárritu’s last two films, Birdman made $103 million while The Revenant made $533 million. So that is quite the gap between films, especially back-to-back films. I honestly have no idea if Digger is going to be closer to $100 million or $500 million. I think what could help Digger and strong word of mouth as well as awards season conversation. If you do not remember, The Revenant was the film that won Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar. There was this narrative surrounding that film, that Leo is looking to win the Oscar, and I think hath honestly helped the film make $500 million. It also helps that the film released in December, so it had the Christmas release window to have solid legs. I think if Digger can build this momentum of it finally being the film that is going to win Tom Cruise an Oscar it could cause people to go out and see this film and see if that hype is real.
The other question, is Digger a financial risk? I think so. I assumed that this film would have a big budget because I assumed that Tom Cruise was asking for a big paycheck and given the budget, I am sure that is 100% what happened. More importantly if you have seen the trailers this movie looks weird. After we got that trailer about a month ago, I said this is going to be one of 2026’s more polarizing films. I have no evidence to back that up, I have not seen the film, and we do not have the early critics reviews. My point in this is that since it looks silly and out there, I think it is going to be a niche film that some people are going to love while other people do not like it. If the film is polarizing, then this movie could underperform at the box office. I do not know if it will out right bomb, it very well could.
Like I said earlier, I have no idea how well Digger is going to do at the box office. Once tickets go on sale, I am curious to see what the opening weekend is tracking to do. I think with those numbers, we will get a better understanding as to just how good or how bad Digger will do at the box office. Right now, I think Digger is going to be a financial risk, especially if the budget is that high but maybe it could have good legs if the film is great and there’s a lot of people talking about Digger finally being to win Tom Cruise an Oscar.
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