Warner Bros.’ ‘Digger’ Proves Hollywood is Digging Its Own Grave

Hollywood has spent years telling audiences they need to be lectured, corrected, and scolded before they can be entertained. Now Warner Bros. may be learning what happens when a studio spends a fortune on a movie that seems built to impress (some) critics, awards voters, and the loudest corners of social media instead of ordinary ticket buyers. Digger, the new Tom Cruise vehicle directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, opened to a grim estimated $8 million from roughly 3,300 North American theaters. That’s a painful start for any wide release. It’s especially rough for a movie whose production budget has been reported in the $125 million to $180 million range, and that’s before marketing costs. Warner Bros. has disputed some of the higher estimates, but even the lower reported budget makes this a costly gamble. For perspective, Digger reportedly took in just $1.2 million from Thursday previews. It then earned about $3.3 million on Friday, including those previews, and was projected to finish its opening weekend around $8 million. That would mark Cruise’s lowest opening since the 2007 drama Lions for Lambs, a much smaller movie from a very different era of his career. Which raises an obvi...