Why Digger Bombed: A Confusing Pitch and a $180 Million Budget

Digger bombed. Actually, that's kind of an understatement. The film cost $180 million to make plus another $100 million to market it, but it only made $8 million domestically on its opening weekend. That's not just a bomb, that's like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

The Digger trailer can't explain what the movie is about

Problem number one: after seeing the trailer, try explaining to anyone what Digger is actually about. There's a cat, a glacier, Tom Cruise in a fat suit, Tom Cruise in a cowboy hat, Tom Cruise with a shovel, and John Goodman yelling at someone, possibly Roseanne. Is it a disaster movie, a climate change satire, a Tom Cruise comedy, a political movie, an awards movie? The best movies you can summarize in a single sentence, but Digger requires a paragraph, and not a very coherent one.

A nearly $300 million comedy that doesn't look particularly funny

So now you've got a movie that cost nearly $300 million, that's difficult to explain, that's supposed to be a comedy but doesn't look particularly funny, and that visually looks gray, ugly and depressing. Not exactly a winning combination.

What did you make of the Digger trailer?