Videos · October 14, 2026 · 41 seconds
Digging for Oscar Gold: Tom Cruise's $125 Million Gamble
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's satire Digger buried Tom Cruise under prosthetics, split the critics, and opened to $8 million in North America. Its real audience may have been a few thousand Oscar voters.
Read the full articleby Dan Chafetz
Transcript
DIGGING FOR OSCAR GOLD: TOM CRUISE'S $125 MILLION GAMBLE
[THE GAMBLE] A star bet on a strange role.
- In Digger, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, pictured, cast Tom Cruise as an aging oil tycoon whose drilling in Greenland breaks off an ice shelf and threatens the world.
- The satire cost a reported $125 million or more, but it opened to just $8 million in the United States and Canada, Cruise's worst opening in nearly 20 years.
[THE REAL AUDIENCE] It was made for Oscar voters.
- Cruise, pictured, has four Oscar nominations, three of them for acting, but he has never won one in competition, and every Iñárritu film has earned nominations.
- Critics are split over his transformation. Noozify gives Digger a B, with a C for the script.
Read the full article at noozify.com. Images: Images: Tom Cruise in December 2024 and in May 2022, U.S. Navy photos (public domain); Alejandro G. Iñárritu at BFI Southbank in 2022, by Raph_PH (CC BY 2.0); via Wikimedia Commons. Music: an original score for Noozify.