In June, the first trailer for Tom Cruise's new movie opened with a highlight reel. Two and a half minutes of his whole career. Then Cruise appeared as a loud Texas oil baron under heavy makeup, pointing a finger gun. A top comment on YouTube said he was coming for the Oscar. Then the first weekend's ticket numbers arrived, and they were bad.
Digger is a big-concept satire from writer-director Alejandro González Iñárritu. John Jurgensen and Esther Zuckerman report in the Journal that it cost about $125 million to make. It sold $8 million of tickets at more than 3,300 U.S. theaters in its first weekend. Divide 8 by 125 and you get about 6 cents back on each dollar, so far, from U.S. theaters alone. That brought out the flop headlines. No Cruise movie had drawn those since The Mummy in 2017.
Here's the record the weekend bumped into. Cruise holds a Guinness World Record for 11 straight movies that each made $100 million. He's 64 and has done stunts other actors won't touch. He has three acting nominations, for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, plus a best-picture nod for producing Top Gun: Maverick. The only Oscar on his shelf is an honorary one for his 45-year career. Jeff Benedict, who is writing his biography, calls a real acting win “his Everest.”
Trying too hard
Dennis Rice, a marketing veteran who worked with Cruise, told the Journal the montage made it look like the team was pushing too hard for a nomination. Critic Amy Nicholson said he picked the riskiest kind of project there is. In her view, a pointed climate satire tends to struggle in the year it comes out. Warner Bros. hit back with ads that put the bad reviews next to the good ones, under the line “Decide for yourself.” Jane Fonda and Mandy Patinkin spoke up for the film. Anne Hathaway, his co-star in the coming Days of Thunder sequel, gave it five stars. A nomination is still possible. A win looks harder, with Matt Damon, John Malkovich and Andrew Scott in the race.
Our read
This is a Career story, with a Behavioral lesson underneath. A career is a portfolio. Cruise's has 45 years of deposits in it, 11 straight hits among them. One weekend took a withdrawal. It didn't empty the account. The record, the stunts, the honorary Oscar, the goodwill from bringing people back to theaters after the pandemic, all of that is still there. He could afford the swing because of what came before it. The budget was the studio's, and his name still put the film in more than 3,300 theaters.
Here's where it touches your own plan. Most of us have one bold late-career bet in mind. A business, a big pile of one stock, a rental property, a move. The question is never whether to take it. It's how big it is next to the record you've built. This week, open your accounts and find your single largest position or planned bet. Write down what share of the whole it is. If a flop weekend there would undo a decade of saving, it's sized like a studio budget, and you don't have a studio behind you. Size it so a thud is a headline, and nothing more. The umbrella goes in the bag on the sunny day, before the trailer drops.