Ben Affleck says the industry reaction to the Digger box office failure could discourage studios from greenlighting ambitious films in the future. Affleck made the comments on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, defending the Tom Cruise-led movie as it heads toward one of the steepest losses in recent memory.
“It’s a little bit like the high-school bullying thing. You see it happening now, frankly, with Digger. Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it’s the most exciting thing to happen. And you think like, it’s a pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people who have talent,” Affleck said on the podcast, according to IGN.
What Affleck Said About Digger’s Box Office Failure
Affleck argued that treating Digger’s commercial struggles as a spectacle sends the wrong signal to studios deciding what to fund next. “If you punish movies that take risks, guess what you’re going to get? A bunch of s, tty homogenized movies. You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing,” he said, per IGN.
The actor and director framed the public reaction as a disincentive for studios to back original, challenging material, warning that the industry could lean further into sequels and established intellectual property if risk-taking keeps getting treated as a punchline.
Digger’s Box Office Numbers
Digger opened domestically with $8 million and added $12 million internationally, according to IGN. After two weekends in theaters, the film had earned $35.3 million globally, a figure TheWrap also cited in reporting that it sits at just over $35 million worldwide.
Both outlets reported that Digger is on pace to lose $250 million by the end of its theatrical run, with Warner Bros. expecting the film to top out around $40 million globally, according to IGN.
Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise in a physically unrecognizable role, opened in theaters on Oct. 2. The black comedy satire, which tackles global warming, holds a 53% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a 74% audience score on the site’s Popcornmeter. IGN gave the film a 6/10 in its own review.
What It Means For Studios And Original Filmmaking
Iñárritu is a back-to-back Best Director Oscar winner for Birdman and The Revenant, a track record that made Digger one of the more closely watched original projects of the year. Its box office trajectory, set against that pedigree, is part of why Affleck singled it out as a test case for how Hollywood treats creative risk.
Digger has divided critics and audiences, though some Hollywood figures have publicly defended it, according to IGN. The film’s marketing team even tried to turn the criticism into a selling point, running an ad campaign that trolled negative reviews, but that effort did not change its box office trajectory.
For fans of original, star-driven filmmaking, Affleck’s comments point to a broader stake in how Digger’s numbers get interpreted. If studios read the film’s losses as proof that big swings do not pay off, future slates could skew more heavily toward sequels and recognizable franchises rather than auteur-driven projects with movie stars attached.
What’s Next
Digger remains in theaters as Warner Bros. projects it will finish its run near $40 million globally. Tom Cruise has not issued a public statement addressing the film’s box office performance.
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