Tom Cruise took a big swing with Digger that did not pay off in its opening weekend at the box office, as the satirical black comedy becomes a major disappointment for Warner Bros.

Filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Digger opened to $8 million from 3,300 North American theaters, which is tough to swallow for a feature that carries a production budget of $125 million. (Reports have emerged that the budget rose to closer to $180 million, a figure that a studio representative disputes.) This marks a letdown from even the scant $12 million to $15 million that Warner Bros. had projected heading into the weekend and represents Cruise’s softest opening frame since 2007’s war drama Lions for Lambs launched to $6.7 million but with a much smaller budget. Digger added $12 million internationally.

The film always looked to be a bold effort designed to spark conversation and ideally hold awards prospects, as Cruise transformed himself into a balding, pot-bellied oil tycoon with an attitude who learns he caused a natural disaster. The awards buzz may prove tough to come by at this point, given that Digger was hit with a C+ CinemaScore from audiences, landing as one of the lowest grades for Cruise’s career, and has polarized critics. Its Rotten Tomatoes score from reviewers stands at 51 percent approval, with The Hollywood Reporter’s review from chief film critic David Rooney deeming it “dead and buried.”

Weeks ago, third-party tracking services initially suggested that Digger could open to closer to $30 million, but interest appeared to crumble in the 10 days leading up to release. Digger will go down as a significant financial loss for Warner Bros., marking an inauspicious final release before Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion merger with the studio is expected to be finalized Oct. 6. News broke days ago that Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are exiting the studio, with Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein taking over. De Luca and Abdy’s impressive 2025 saw the releases of acclaimed Oscar winners One Battle After Another and Sinners, while 2026’s results have been far less stirring.

After this brief detour to auteur-driven fare that brings to mind Cruise’s earlier-career projects like Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia, the star will quickly return to the action-heavy, IP-driven movies that his audiences have come to expect, with Days of Thunder 2 soon revving up production. On Saturday morning, Cruise took to social media to assert that he remained “so proud of what we created” with Digger.

Nabbing the top spot on the domestic chart was Amazon MGM Studios’ Verity, as the feature adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel notched $32.6 million from 3,510 North American locations. This is an encouraging start for the $40 million-budgeted thriller from filmmaker Michael Showalter that stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett.

Verity’s critical response was far less spirited. It was saddled with the same disappointing C+ CinemaScore as Digger and holds a 34 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from reviewers, with critic Richard Lawson writing for THR that it’s a “literary misfire.” Verity centers on a struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) taking a job as a ghostwriter for acclaimed author Verity Crawford (Hathaway).

Over the weekend, Disney’s Avengers: Endgame returned to the top spot on the global box office chart. With its Avengers Endgame: Encore rerelease timed to build momentum for this December’s Avengers: Doomsday, the 2019 Marvel Studios hit reclaims the top spot that it first achieved in the year of its release, when it initially surpassed 2009’s Avatar. Endgame fell to the runner-up ranking two years later as Avatar’s 2021 rerelease put the James Cameron blockbuster back at No. 1.

More to come.

Following protest from locals, the city of Livingston, Montana has temporarily suspended production on Daily Wire‘s latest film, Pawn Shop.

During a special meeting on Saturday, the Livingston City Commission unanimously passed a motion raised by Commissioner Cindy Daniels in response to concerns raised by citizens over the disruption to businesses and the city’s only food bank, as well as lack of notice regarding some of the production’s more dangerous stunts.

“A motion to immediately temporary suspend Bonfire Pawn Shop LLC’s permit while seeking legal opinion from the city attorney in a timely matter to amend, suspend or revoke the permit to come back to the commission not after 5:00pm on October 5th,” the Commission concluded in Saturday’s meeting.

Deadline has reached out to the film’s producers at Daily Wire and Bonfire Legend for comment.

Since filming began, locals have protested the alleged use of blank gunshots, pyrotechnics and a staged car wreck without properly notifying residents and businesses, as well as its opening scene, which appears to dramatize ICE‘s fatal shooting of Renée Good in Minnesota back in January.

Meanwhile, the Livingston Food Resource Center (LFRC) released a statement explaining how the production has impacted its clients, who “already face numerous obstacles to meeting their most basic needs,” adding: “Since filming began across the street from our building, road closures and armed security guards have increased the barriers to accessing food. Our clients deserve to feel unequivocally safe accessing this essential resource.”

With dangerous stunts involving pyrotechnics, Livingston Fire Department confirmed they were on call, but some locals say they were not properly notified of the sequence taking place in their front yards. Deadline has reached out to the Montana Film Office.

Originally scheduled to film in downtown Livingston through Oct. 10, Police Chief Wayne Hard says the department has been contacted with complaints “on a daily basis” since production began, but there have been no reports of violence.

With Rust producer Carter Boehm serving on the production team, the latest collaboration between Bonfire Legend’s Sonnier and Daily Wire comes after their last film, Run Hide Fight: Infidels, was picketed by IATSE. Several crew members walked off over labor issues in South Carolina, shortly before Jonathan Majors was involved in an on-set accident that resulted in his co-star JC Kilcoyne needing stitches “all over his hands” after falling through a window.

Deadline has confirmed that the Pawn Shop production is not under an IATSE contract either, while it is under a “conditional start” with SAG-AFTRA.

A call sheet seen by Deadline lists Danny Trejo, Harvey Keitel and Henry Thomas among the cast.

The synopsis for Pawn Shop reads: “When chaos hits the streets of Minneapolis, a young federal agent is left alone after his partner is seriously hurt and must find a way to survive an increasingly dangerous situation. Seeking shelter inside a neighborhood pawn shop, he becomes trapped with a traditional Hispanic father and his progressive college-age son, forcing three very different men to confront fear, conflicting beliefs and a crisis that tests their courage and humanity.”

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