‘Animals’ Star Ben Affleck Defends ‘Digger’ Against the Pile-On, Warns That Punishing Big Swings Will Breed Safer, Blander Hollywood Movies

Hollywood loves a comeback story, but it can also be merciless when a big movie stumbles. Box office flops get picked apart online within hours, and the bigger the budget, the louder the celebration. That’s the climate Alejandro González Iñárritu’s ‘Digger‘ has faced since its release.

The film stars Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an aging oil magnate whose drilling sets off an ecological disaster. It was billed as a comedy of catastrophic proportions, and it marked Iñárritu’s first English-language film since ‘The Revenant’. Cruise himself was a producer, and he even praised Warner Bros. executives for greenlighting it without a page of script.

The results have been brutal. ‘Digger’ opened to just $8 million domestically on October 2, falling 60% in its second weekend, and has grossed about $35 million worldwide. Now Ben Affleck has stepped in to defend it, saying the glee surrounding its failure feels like high school bullying.

Affleck made the comments on Josh Horowitz’s ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast while reflecting on his own career. He argued that people are eager to celebrate the bomb as though it’s the most exciting thing to happen, when it’s actually an ambitious, interesting movie made by talented people. He also noted that some of those piling on hadn’t even seen it.

His core warning is about incentives. If audiences and critics punish movies that take risks, he said, Hollywood will end up making a bunch of homogenized movies. You can’t do something interesting without taking a big swing, he added, and sometimes that means you’re going to look bad.

The defense isn’t coming from nowhere. Affleck compared the reaction to what he experienced in the mid-2000s, when public perception of him as a movie star had turned sour. There’s a difference, he suggested, between being unknown and being known and disliked.

That history gives the comments extra weight. Affleck knows what it’s like to be a punching bag, and he is now directing and starring in his own new film, ‘Animals’. One commentator noted that Affleck’s point was fair, and that you can dislike ‘Digger’ while recognizing that an R-rated, star-driven auteur swing is the kind of movie people say they want more of.

BREAKING: Tom Cruise Just Dropped The First Full Trailer For Digger This Is Not A Drill I Repeat, This Is Not A Drill https://t.co/xwftlE6gnB

— Cinema Tweets (@CinemaTweets1) July 13, 2026

The financial picture is rough. Reported budgets range from $125 million to $180 million, and Warner Bros. put the breakeven point at around $300 million, though another report cited $350 million. Estimates of the loss range from $150 million to a projected $245 million.

The opening was the lowest for a Cruise-led film in 19 years. It also came in far below the $18 million to $20 million the studio had hoped for. It stands as Warner Bros.’ final release before the Paramount Skydance acquisition closed.

The marketing tried to get ahead of the divide. Warner Bros. released an ad juxtaposing glowing and scathing reactions, with ‘masterpiece’ next to ‘unpleasant’, urging moviegoers to decide for themselves. Reviews were polarized, with some of the harshest negativity aimed at the film’s tone.

Even Iñárritu seemed to know the odds. At CinemaCon, he teased the film as a high-wire act, which looks prescient now. Cruise, whose last outings include ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’, was also known for being a risk-taker.

Affleck’s comments raise a real question about how the industry treats ambitious originals. Studios already lean heavily on sequels and franchises, and a high-profile bomb can make executives even more cautious. Whether ‘Digger’ ultimately gets reappraised or remembered as a cautionary tale, the conversation it’s sparked is a significant one.

It’s also fair to note that critical ridicule is part of the deal for anyone swinging for the fences. But Affleck’s point is that celebrating failure isn’t the same as holding work to account.