Tom Cruise will not be jumping on any couches this weekend.

This as the Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible blockbuster star posts his lowest opening in 19 years, that being the reported $160M net priced Digger, which didn’t find an audience with an $8M domestic debut, a $20M global overall start and a C+ CinemaScore.

Myriad sources tell us that the film stands to lose around $150M and that’s if it’s lucky to get to a global box office of $50M. Post pandemic pricey fall disasters such as last year’s Dwayne Johnson starring The Smashing Machine and the 2022 Margot Robbie, Christian Bale and John David Washington absurdist period title Amsterdam had similar single digit domestic openings, and finaled lower with respective global grosses of $21.1M and $31.2M, and off of respective smaller budgets of $50M and $80M.

The timing of Digger‘s bombing is Shakespearan, coming at the most stinging moment when Skydance co-CEO (né Paramount CEO) David Ellison refused to honor Warner Bros Motion Picture Chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy‘s contracts and bring them into the fold. This after Warner’s milestone 2025 global gross of $4.3B, the best since 2019, and 11 Oscar wins. The new ParaBros is inheriting several Burbank lot lucrative IP assets shepherded by De Luca and Abyd such as Oceans Eleven, Gremlins, Gladys, Minecraft 2 and more going forward, 38 features overall, dated into 2029. In 2027, the Paramount Warners Bros slate will overdeliver the state AGs demands of 30 films annually with 36 titles.

How did Warners pick up a shovel and break ground on a filibustery-dialogue driven satire about the MAGA era which follows an oil tycoon whose latest ice caps project literally misfires, causing a global environmental disaster? (Those who’ve seen Digger know there’s a meta twist).

Iñárritu first developed what would become Digger at Netflix (the project had a different title) where he made the 2 hour 39 minute stream of consciousness art movie Bardo. At the time Leonardo DiCaprio was eyeing, however, after the streamer made the very-similar $75M Adam McKay directed environmental satire, Don’t Look Up, Iñárritu took the project to his Revenant producer Mary Parent at Legendary. There Digger was developed with Tom Cruise in mind.

Cut to 2024. Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav is hot-for-teacher to land Cruise post Top Gun Maverick, and dispatches De Luca and Abdy to make a non-exclusive originals and franchise deal with the global star. The first project under the pact? Digger. Pamela Abdy had worked with Iñárritu on his $17M priced Oscar winning Birdman and $135M costing Leonardo DiCaprio western The Revenant while she was Production President at New Regency from 2013-2016. De Luca worked with Cruise when he was President and COO of New Line on the much thriftier priced Magnolia, also from Paul Thomas Anderson, which landed the star his third Oscar nomination (in Supporting Actor) at the time.

De Luca and Abdy, we hear, ran Digger through their analytical comps system. The combo of Cruise and Iñárritu justified a $125M production greenligiht. Legendary’s development costs were bought out by Warners, hence the reason why the production company isn’t co-financing ala other Warner projects like Dune and the Godzilla Kong movies. The cost with an extended schedule rose to around a net $160M shot at Leavesden in the UK with tax credits. Many sources have argued that the cost was substantially higher before the pic’s near $100M global theatrical marketing spend.

At the LA Westwood premiere, Cruise exclaimed to De Luca and Abdy, “You didn’t even take a breath when we brought you this film. I don’t even think you turned the page on it. You’re just like — you’re in.”

Which raises the question, exactly which studio executive says ‘No’ to Cruise?

With De Luca and Abdy painted by some as spendthrift in their loss of motion picture boss jobs at the new Skydance, let that executive who has said ‘No’ to Cruise on his productions, cast the first stone.

Skydance was heavily involved in the co-financing of lengthy Cruise shoots Top Gun: Maverick (net $177M) and the last two Mission: Impossible movies, Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning, which carried an exorbitant combined cost between $591M and $691M, again, those budgets driven up partly due to Covid stops, but also Cruise’s fastidiousness.

“The problem is that there’s no one in Cruise’s camp to tell him ‘No’, and what might not work” says one high level source who was involved with the Mission movies, “It use to be his producing partner Paula Wagner.”

“Everyone knows he likes to direct on the set,” adds another, “I don’t know how that worked out with Alejandro because he doesn’t take direction from anyone.”

De Luca and Abdy did tell Cruise ‘No’, and that’s when they passed on the actor’s project, Deeper, with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman, a supernatural underwater thriller that carried a $270M budget ask and no script at the time. The project remains in deep development at Universal. De Luca and Abdy also passed on making Michael Mann’s Heat 2, the sequel to a lucrative title in the Warner library as the budget for that movie climbed to $160M, which was cheap enough for $2.7 trillion conglomerate Amazon to make.

The first weekend of October, a hot frame where Warners launched the first Joker to a final gross of $1.07B WW and A Star Is Born to $440M WW, was chosen. Marketing began to tease the movie as the role that we’ve never seen Cruise in: an old, crusty, balding Texas waving a shovel heroically in an apartment. Toe-dip screenings with illuminati critics showed great promise. We hear there were two test screenings. The first with a half hour longer edit didn’t go so well, however, a second test with a half hour shorter edit (approaching the pic’s current 2 hour 9 minute running time) went much better. Insurance covered a reshoot involving Cruise’s makeup following the first test screening. Cruise began pre-production on the movie while doing press for Final Reckoning last year.

While Cruise worked it in regards to opening the movie including a stop at April’s CinemaCon, UK world premiere with the Royals, Q&As and even an appearance on Jennifer Hudson, his availability to the press wasn’t 100%. Read, trades were barred from red carpet appearances despite Cruise constant availably to them on the last two Mission: Impossibles and several red carpets for Top Gun: Maverick.

Amid Paramount’s industry-shaking acquisition of Warner Bros., James Gunn is remaining focused on his work.

When asked if he’s ready to start writing his next film to follow Man of Tomorrow, the DC Studios co-CEO revealed he’s “already in it” while awaiting the edit for his upcoming sequel to 2025’s Superman.

“I had to do something while I was waiting for the assembly!!” wrote Gunn to a fan on Threads.

After wrapping production on Man of Tomorrow in August, the fourth film in Gunn’s new DCU franchise is set to premiere July 9, 2027 in theaters.

Meanwhile, Gunn and co-CEO Peter Safran are safe amid the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger after David Ellison invited the DC Studios bosses to continue working at the company, which has been renamed to Skydance. All film units, Paramount and Warner Bros, are to report into Paramount Pictures co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.

Since Gunn and Safran stepped into their position following the WBD merger in 2022, DC Studios has released Superman and Supergirl, with Clayface premiering Oct. 23 and The Batman: Part II currently in production, scheduled for a Feb. 18, 2028 premiere.

J. Todd Anderson, who worked as a storyboard artist on dozens of films from The Nice Guys and The Tragedy of Macbeth to Hail, Caesar! and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, died Oct. 1. He was 67.

Anderson died at a hospital in Orange County, California, after a years-long battle with cancer, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Born John Todd Anderson in Springfield, Ohio, he started working in Hollywood in the late 1980s. The first film he storyboarded, 1987’s Raising Arizona, launched a long-running collaboration with filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, aka the Coen Brothers.

Since then, he storyboarded every one of their movies, including 1990’s Miller’s Crossing, 1996’s Fargo, 1998’s The Big Lebowski, 2004’s The Ladykillers, 2010’s True Grit, 2016’s Hail, Caesar! and 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. He also worked on Ethan’s Drive-Away Dolls (2024) and Honey Don’t! (2025), as well as Joel’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).

Throughout his career, Anderson worked with several other auteurs and A-list stars on projects, such as George Clooney’s 2008 Leatherheads; Drew Barrymore’s 2009 Whip It; David Lowery’s 2018 The Old Man & the Gun; 2012’s The Dictator, starring and co-written by Sacha Baron Cohen; and three Shane Black pics, including 2016’s The Nice Guys, starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, 2018’s The Predator and 2025’s Play Dirty, starring Mark Wahlberg and LaKeith Stanfield.

His other storyboard credits include 1989’s Twister, 1991’s The Addams Family, 1994’s Nadja, 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, 2010’s The Big Bang, 2016’s Warcraft and 2023’s Fool’s Paradise.

Anderson also directed two films: 1999’s The Naked Man, which he wrote with Ethan, and 2008’s My Mummy.

In addition to his work behind the camera, he also made a few on-screen appearances in the films Fargo, Leatherheads, The Nice Guys and American Violence (2017), among others.

Anderson is survived by his mother, Donna Lou (Beaver) Anderson; his sister, Kimberly Patterson; and his niece, Haley Christ Patterson.