‘Digger’ Boxoffice Bomb: Have Audiences Lost Appetite for Manipulative Scripts?

Is this the end of the road for climate change disaster movies? Britain’s Daily Mail says the new movie Digger, which features Tom Cruise as a rapacious oil baron who provokes a climate apocalypse, “is on course to be the biggest box office flop of all time.” Its estimated global box office is set to top out at $50 million. It needs $350 million globally to break even.

Climate change disaster movies used to attract big audiences. The Day After Tomorrow, a 2004 film based in part on an Al Gore fever dream about New York covered by an ice sheet due to the melting Arctic, made a profit of over $500 million. In 2021, Don’t Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, broke Netflix records.

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John Fund

John Fund is National Review’s national-affairs reporter.

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Is this the end of the road for climate change disaster movies? Britain’s Daily Mail says the new movie Digger, which features Tom Cruise as a rapacious oil baron who provokes a climate apocalypse, “is on course to be the biggest box office flop of all time.” Its estimated global box office is set to top out at $50 million. It needs $350 million globally to break even.

Climate change disaster movies used to attract big audiences. The Day After Tomorrow, a 2004 film based in part on an Al Gore fever dream about New York covered by an ice sheet due to the melting Arctic, made a profit of over $500 million. In 2021, Don’t Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, broke Netflix records.