The director of Tom Cruise’s new movie Digger is speaking out about its disastrous reviews and box office crash.
Oscar favorite Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 63, the third director in Oscar history to win consecutive Best Director awards in 2015 and 2016 for Birdman and The Revenant, directed Cruise, 64, in the film, in which the actor plays an oil tycoon.
Critics have not taken kindly to the $125 million movie, which made just an estimated $8 million in the U.S. and Canada and $12 million overseas in its opening weekend. It was Cruise’s lowest opening weekend since 2007’s $35 million film Lions for Lambs opened to $6.7 million. But that Robert Redford-directed film cost just $35 million to make.
Iñárritu told The New York Times, “The movie is not perfect,” but “I like taking risks.”
The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager called the film “desperate” and a “catastrophe,” and he’s not alone. The film earned Cruise his lowest Rotten Tomatoes score in nine years.
“I prefer that to the lukewarm reception,” Iñárritu claimed.
As for the “over-the-top, bombastic” acting in the film, as Variety put it, the director said its grandiosity was meant to reflect “the culture that we are living in.” He explained, “Everything is just to get attention, to get likes, to be uncomfortable, to be annoying.”
Critics also slammed both Cruise and Iñárritu, with The Hollywood Reporter calling them “a match made in showboating hell in a shallow satire insufferably pleased with itself.”
Cruise insisted he was “proud” of the film in an Instagram post, telling fans, “Digger is officially in theaters, and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to create this film alongside such talented artists. Thank you to the entire cast and crew for your dedication, hard work, and joy. The experience was truly unforgettable, and I’m so proud of what we created.”
Warner Bros. tackled the negative chatter surrounding the film head-on, releasing a new teaser ahead of opening weekend that placed the negative reviews opposite the rarer positive ones. “F--- those people!” Cruise’s character declares in the teaser, “They’re afraid to tell the truth, whatever that is.”
In yet another teaser, the studio blames Americans for not getting it. Cruise’s character says, “America has stood beside the world in its darkest of hours,” after which Riz Ahmed’s character responds, “Not anymore,” as the teaser contrasts international critics’ adulatory reviews with those of Americans who weren’t impressed.
Cruise’s character concludes, “You decide which!” Warner Bros. appears to have deleted that ad after it was shared online.
