In less than 48 hours Warner Bros. will officially join the Skydance group, and the legendary studio closes this chapter by handing over to its successor what will be the studio’s biggest cinematic failure in years. We are talking about ‘Digger’, Tom Cruise’s bold bet in which he physically transforms for the film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
The film, which opened in 3,300 cinemas in the United States, has only managed to gross 8 million dollars in its opening weekend, landing in fifth place at the box office. These figures are paltry for a movie that carried a budget between 125 and 180 million dollars, so the financial blow that it will represent for the group’s accounts will be substantial.
The figure falls even below Warner’s own forecasts, which, facing the film’s tepid and uneven reception, had already trimmed weekend expectations to a range of 12 to 15 million dollars. Not even that. With a CinemaScore of C+, it is one of Cruise’s worst career ratings and his worst big-screen debut since 2007, when the film ‘Lions for Lambs’ opened with 6.7 million, albeit with a much more modest budget.
‘Digger’ is going to be worse for Warner Bros.’ bottom line than ‘Supergirl’, and almost on its own justifies the dismissal of Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy as the studio’s top executives ahead of Skydance’s arrival.
Let us recall that these are provisional figures, and some analysts believe the box office could be even worse than the 8 million announced, and could become one of the biggest flops in recent mainstream cinema. Even Warner itself has had no choice but to highlight all the negative reviews of the film in a notice that encourages viewers to “judge for themselves” whether the movie is as bad as they say.
Anne Hathaway conquers the box office without much to celebrate
The weekend’s leader was the premiere of ‘Verity. The Shadow of a Deception’, adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel with Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson in the lead roles. 32,618,776 dollars in the United States for a total international of 62 million.
Clearly, compared to the numbers for ‘Digger’, this is a major triumph, although delving into the details the result isn’t as hopeful. With a strong turnout of young women, the film posts another CinemaScore of C+ and has also been hammered by critics.
As is often the case, the difference lies in the budget. With a “modest” 40 million dollars, the film should have little trouble turning a profit at the box office in the coming days.
Between the top spot of ‘Verity. The Shadow of a Deception’ and the fifth of ‘Digger’, we find titles from previous weeks that manage to outpace Tom Cruise’s film without trouble. The runner-up is ‘Resident Evil’, which in its third week adds another excellent 12.5 million dollars. The film’s U.S. total now stands at 124.89 million dollars with an international total of 245 million, confirming the success of the franchise reboot.
In third place, Brad Pitt and ‘In the Heart of the Beast’, which despite a uneven start in the United States, closes its second weekend with 11 million more for a total of 38.4 million. The film is kept afloat mainly by international box office, which raises its total to 98.7 million.
Fourth place goes to ‘Primetime’, which adds another 8 million to the A24 release, pushing its total to 34 million as it awaits its release in the rest of the world. The one that fares worse than ‘Digger’ is ‘The Lost Island’, which after a lackluster start last week ends this week with 7.2 million more for a total of 23.6 million.
‘Avengers: Endgame’ collapses but becomes the most-watched film in history
In seventh place we find the movie that led the box office seven days ago. The re-release of ‘Avengers: Endgame’ doesn’t have much staying power on the marquee, which is reasonable given that it’s a product aimed at Marvel fans. The film still posts 4.4 million, bringing the total of its re-release to 36.2 million dollars.
Worldwide, this Disney experiment with the re-release yields an impressive 126 million for a film that was already well profitable. Moreover, this “little extra” allows the film to achieve a very significant milestone: surpassing ‘Avatar’ to become the highest-grossing film in history with 2.925 billion dollars versus James Cameron’s 2.923 billion. A smart move by Disney, although after the Fox acquisition, both films were already part of its portfolio.
In eighth place another surprise, the release of the Indian film ‘Drishyam: The Conclusion’, the third part of this saga, which has earned in American theaters 2.715.000 dollars.
‘Practically Magic 2’ (2.665.000 dollars in the weekend, 64.6 million in total) and ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ (2.450.000 dollars in the weekend, 954 million in total) close the top 10 of the weekend, which for the first time in 12 weeks pushes ‘The Odyssey’ out to No. 11.
The next week, the most notable release to hit theaters is the sequel to ‘The Social Network’: ‘The Price of the Network’. We’ll see if it can repeat the success of its predecessor, with Zuckerberg moving from hero to villain.
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