Ben Affleck has compared the reaction to Tom Cruise’s Digger to “high-school bullying,” insisting the eagerness with which some have celebrated its box office failure could discourage risk-taking in Hollywood.
Digger is reportedly set to lose an eye-watering $250 million by the end of its theatrical run, with Warner Bros. expecting it to cap at around $40 million globally. Its opening weekend brought in just $8 million domestically and $12 million internationally. It’s currently on $35.3 million globally after two weekends in theaters. Variety reported that Digger may go down one of the biggest Hollywood flops of all time.
Directed by back-to-back Best Director Oscar winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), and starring screen legend Tom Cruise, Digger has split both critics and audiences. Attempts have been made to weaponise the mixed reaction in its favour, and Hollywood stars have come out in its defence, but Digger does not appear to have the legs to recover from its initial box office disaster status.
Speaking on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Batman star Ben Affleck defended ambitious filmmaking and risk-taking, issuing a warning that the reaction to Digger could see Hollywood retreat into safer bets such as sequels and recognizable IP adaptations.
“It’s a little bit like the high-school bullying thing,” Affleck argued, “with people who hadn’t even seen movies. You see it happening now, frankly, with Digger. Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it’s the most exciting thing to happen. And you think like, it’s a pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people who have talent.
“Everybody wants to count the money, what it lost or whatever. To me, I just think, if you punish movies that take risks, guess what you’re going to get? A bunch of s**tty homogenized movies. You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing. And that means you’re going to sometimes look bad.”
Digger has a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, and a more positive 74% user review rating on its Popcornmeter. IGN’s Digger review returned a 6/10. We said: “Digger’s satire may not change your thinking on global warming, but there are excellent performances and more than a few laughs.”
Digger trolled the negative reviews in its most recent ad campaign, but that failed to move the needle. Tom Cruise himself has yet to issue an official statement in response.
