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This year’s CinemaCon included appearances from just about every A-lister you can name: Ryan Gosling, Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Dwayne Johnson, Sandra Bullock, Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Michael B. Jordan and the list continues. Amid such commotion, the guest perhaps sparking the most conversation was Tom Cruise, who started to get the word out about Warner Bros.‘ Digger.

There was significant excitement over the first-look footage revealing perhaps the world’s biggest movie star transforming himself to become a portly, gray-haired jerk in an offbeat feature focusing on climate change. But questions persisted about the commercial prospects for a film that spotlights Cruise in a role that is dramatically different from the action-packed franchise fare that has lately been his bread and butter.

Now, it’s becoming clear that general audiences might not quite know what to make of Digger, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ambitious offering about Cruise’s powerful entrepreneur having caused a natural disaster. The film’s initial production budget was $125 million but has been reported to have risen to closer to $180 million, although a Warner Bros. spokesperson disputes this figure. Third-party tracking services predicted months ago that Digger could launch with a domestic opening weekend around $30 million, but the studio is now projecting a worrisome start in the range of $12 to $15 million in North America, with an additional $15 to $20 million internationally.

The fact that Digger is such a big swing creatively and feels miles away from the star’s typically safer IP plays, including his forthcoming Days of Thunder 2, has garnered praise from onlookers. But this film adds to Cruise’s tough stretch of late, with the underperformance at the box office for last year’s pricey Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, billed as the series’ final installment, suggesting that there may have been too many trips to the well for that Paramount franchise.

Also starring Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller, Digger is certainly a film that would benefit from awards buzz, and the studio hopes that potential Oscar consideration could give it legs at the box office. Warner Bros.’ notable 2025 titles reaped the benefit of great word of mouth and Academy Awards success, as best picture winner One Battle After Another boasted a 4.4-times multiple globally over its opening weekend — although it ultimately did not turn a profit, due to its hefty budget — while the impressive Sinners notched a 5.8-times multiple.

Alas, this year has been far more challenging for Warner Bros. than 2025. The studio’s most successful 2026 title has been Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights, which topped out at $84 million domestically but reached a $241 million global cume on an $80 million budget. Warner Bros.’ earlier disappointments included The Bride! and Supergirl, while the recent Practical Magic 2 has underperformed but is still in theaters. Waiting in the wings for later this year are Clayface, The Cat in the Hat and Dune: Part Three.

“It’s going to be a very interesting weekend,” Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Whenever you have a star of the magnitude of Tom Cruise taking a huge swing for the fences and playing against type, the box office expectations shouldn’t necessarily be centered around star power alone. By design, this is a very filmmaker-centric, envelope-pushing movie. It’s not positioned as a mainstream blockbuster, but rather as an audacious filmmaking showcase for one of the world’s biggest movie stars and filmmaker Iñárritu.”

Digger has seen a polarizing response, holding a 50 percent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review for THR, chief film critic David Rooney colorfully wrote that “you watch in excruciating weariness as it disappears up its own ass and then realize to your dismay that there’s another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure.”

Likely winning the domestic box office is Amazon MGM Studios‘ Verity, with director Michael Showalter’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover‘s novel starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. The studio projects an opening in the range of $27 million to $30 million, with the project carrying a production budget of $40 million. Verity centers on struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) getting hired as a ghostwriter for acclaimed author Verity Crawford (Hathaway).

Verity holds a 48 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from reviewers, with critic Richard Lawson writing for THR that the movie “careens off a cliff, plummeting past so-bad-it’s-good and crashing on the rocks of agonizingly dumb.” The biggest opening for a Hoover adaptation remains the $50 million debut for Sony’s embattled It Ends With Us, while Verity’s projected launch will surpass that of 2025’s Regretting You and 2026’s Reminders of Him.

Ultimately, the weekend is primed to spark plenty of debate over Digger’s outcome, with the situation likely to be a bit more complex than might be initially assumed. As Dergarabedian adds, “We have to place our expectations around what this movie is and what it’s trying to be, rather than what the name Tom Cruise might normally be expected to deliver at the box office — particularly when this is outside a known franchise like Mission: Impossible or a more traditional action role.”