‘Digger’ Spot Leans Into the Film’s Rotten Tomatoes Score as the Box Office Struggles

Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger‘ arrived in theaters on Oct. 2 as one of the fall’s biggest swings. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon whose drilling causes an environmental calamity that threatens civilization. It was long pitched as an awards player from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

The conversation around the film has been dominated by its reviews. The critical response has been sharply divided, with some critics praising Cruise’s all-in performance and others finding the satire exhausting. That split has shaped how Warner Bros. has chosen to sell the movie.

Now there is another example. A new spot for ‘Digger’ plays into the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score. The 31-second clip shows a gray-haired man in a patterned polo shirt gazing out of an airplane window.

It is not the studio’s first attempt to address the response head-on. Warner Bros. posted an ad on Sept. 29, about an hour before the review embargo lifted, that told moviegoers to decide for themselves. The ad paired positive and negative reactions from early audiences, flipped back and forth on screen, and carried the tagline ‘Same film, different truth.’

The numbers explain the strategy. As of Oct. 1, ‘Digger’ sat at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 147 reviews, which makes it officially “rotten.” It is the first Cruise film to earn that designation since 2017’s ‘The Mummy,’ and Iñárritu’s lowest-rated film and first rotten one. The audience score goes live when the movie opens.

The reviews themselves are polarized. Even many negative reviews single out Cruise’s performance as a reason to see it, and Riz Ahmed has drawn praise as a scene stealer. The complaints repeat from review to review, with critics calling the film bloated and exhausting.

The box office picture has been just as difficult. The film earned $1.2 million in Thursday previews, and Deadline’s Friday evening update was eyeing a $10 million opening weekend. That would be Cruise’s lowest opening in 19 years, since ‘Lions for Lambs’ in 2007.

You decide. https://t.co/c3jA93X8tg pic.twitter.com/iEm58ueEPb

— Digger (@diggerthemovie) October 3, 2026

Expectations were much higher before critics weighed in. Early tracking had the film opening between $18 million and $20 million, a number that has since fallen sharply. The stakes are high for a film that was greenlit at $125 million and, according to Variety, ballooned to between $160 million and $180 million.

Variety noted that the “decide for yourself” campaign may have been an attempt to get ahead of critics, who were far less generous than the first wave of social media reactions. Forbes suggested the ad could end up being too little, too late. A new spot that keeps the focus on the score suggests the studio has not changed course.

Whether the approach works will come down to word of mouth. The audience score will show whether regular moviegoers side with the critics or with Cruise’s biggest fans. For now, ‘Digger’ is the rare tentpole whose marketing is built around the idea that the reviews do not tell the whole story.

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