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A-Lister Unloads on Haters Celebrating Tom Cruise Bomb

Ben Affleck wants people to stop “celebrating” the film’s downfall.

Ben Affleck is warning fans against “celebrating the bomb” of Tom Cruise’s latest film, Digger.

The Oscar winner appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he told host Josh Horowitz that the film’s poor reviews are an example of “the high school bullying thing.” Cruise’s Oscar bait film is projected to earn just $50 million worldwide against its estimated $350 million budget, according to Variety. Critics’ reviews have been dismal, as the film debuted with just a 41 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.

Affleck joined the chorus of celebrities defending Cruise and its Oscar-winning director Alejandro Iñárritu against critics who called the film a “disaster.”

“Frankly, with Digger, everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it’s the most exciting thing that happened,” Affleck said on the podcast. “And this is a pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people that have talent, and everybody wants to count the money, what it may have lost or whatever, and 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.”

His comments come after Oscar winner Anne Hathaway used her Letterboxd account for the first time to praise Digger as a “brilliant movie.” She also wrote, “It’s smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious. It’s worth making the time to see and decide for yourself what you make of it.” She concluded, “For me? 10/10.”

Hathaway was one of several, as Jane Fonda turned in her own Instagram post with heaps of praise.

“Digger is a fascinating, courageous, important film by a true cinematic artist, the Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker, Alejandro Iñárritu,” the icon wrote.

She added about Cruise’s performance, which several critics have panned, “The film allows us to witness another side of Tom Cruise’s courage. It was a big, brave risk for him to take on this role, and he was very good in it and very brave. He went all out, 100 percent owning the part.”

Added Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell, 37, the movie “will stand the test of time.”

Warner Bros. tried to lean into critics’ contradictory takes by using its poor reviews for intrigue in the film’s teasers. One ad blamed American critics for its poor stateside reviews compared to its international reception, which the company later deleted following backlash. Despite the attempts, Digger’s already low box-office interest continued to drop, with its second-weekend earnings coming in even lower than originally anticipated.

Affleck insisted that making a bad film now and then was par for the course. “You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing; that means you’re going to sometimes look bad,” he said.

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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