Tom Cruise’s Box-Office Disaster Officially Removed From 3,100 Theaters

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

Having completed three weeks of release, Tom Cruise‘s new political satire film has emerged not only as the biggest flop of the year, but also as the biggest flop of his storied career. Ironically, the movie was marketed as a tribute to Cruise’s contributions to cinema, with an early trailer that was mostly made up of clips from his most memorable movies. There was a rather unsubtle Oscar campaign being prepared for Cruise ahead of the film’s release, and while he can still be honored by the Academy, his chances are getting bleaker by the day. The film simply has too much baggage at this stage, and this week’s theatrical purging will certainly not help, especially since the reviews have been so divisive.

The film was given a massive debut in more than 3,300 theaters, but the writing was already on the wall. It bombed with just $8 million in its domestic debut, against a budget that has been reported to be as high as $180 million. It was dropped from several IMAX locations after one week and replaced by Christopher Nolan‘s summer sensation The Odyssey. Two weeks into its release, the movie was removed from 2,500 theaters — the 10th-biggest drop of all time. This week, the movie is set to lose another 583 theaters. It’ll enter its fourth week of release in just 200-odd locations, representing a 3,100 decrease in its theatrical footprint since its debut.

Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours.
Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from
the encounter.

Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you
completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the
conversation is.

• Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He
  never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
• You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve
  is exactly the door he would knock on.
• The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence.
  It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
• He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.

Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is
after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.

• The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence
  against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
• He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool
  you would normally reach for.
• His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend
  the rest of your life proving him wrong.
• He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.

Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work
out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.

• Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from:
  a mind the equal of the hero’s, pointed the wrong way.
• You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he
  has already built the room.
• This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs
  the game to be worth playing.
• It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.

Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that
is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.

• Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the
  answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
• You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no
  interest in how capable you are.
• No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences
  quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
• Call it. He will wait.

Here’s How Much the Epic Satire Has Grossed

• Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

• Image via Warner Bros.

• Image via Warner Bros.

• Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

• Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

• Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

• Image via Warner Bros.

• Image via Warner Bros.

• Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

• Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

We’re talking, of course, about Digger, which has so far grossed less than $50 million worldwide. For context, even Joker: Folie à Deux managed to hit the $200 million mark. Directed by two-time Oscar winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Digger opened to divisive reviews, with some calling it a self-aggrandizing slog and others hailing it as a prescient masterpiece. It now sits at a 52% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “A stylized satire whose audacious design proves too mannered for some of the laughs to smoothly land, Digger is a bold swing of the shovel by Tom Cruise and Alejandro González Iñárritu that misses as often as it strikes gold.” Also starring Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, and Emma D’Arcy, the movie doesn’t yet have a PVOD release date. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Digger Rockwell is the most powerful man in the world but, after unleashing a catastrophe, he must now prove to be its savior as well.