Tom Cruise’s Digger is ending a majority of its IMAX run after just a week, with The Odyssey set to replace it.
Satirical black comedy Digger was co-written and directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu – who is behind Oscar-winning films Birdman and The Revenant – and follows oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Cruise) as he tries to save the lives of thousands from an environmental disaster that he’s behind.
The film cost an estimated $160million to produce but on its opening weekend, it took just $20million which puts it on course to become one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. The numbers haven’t gotten any better and it now looks like Digger’s IMAX run is set to come to an abrupt end after just one week.
From Friday (October 9), a handful of UK IMAX cinemas will show Digger once a day but a majority will be focused exclusively on the return of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
‘THE ODYSSEY’ is returning to IMAX theaters again on October 9. pic.twitter.com/mk9oOybYxf
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) October 6, 2026
The Odyssey’s first IMAX run was so popular that tickets were being resold for hundreds on eBay.
In August, the historical epic became Nolan’s most successful film after it took $1.104billion (£819million) globally after nearly one month in cinemas, beating The Dark Knight Rises’ $1.085billion (£805.7million) box office. Earlier this month it was reported that The Odyssey has now taken more than $1.7billion.
The film has received huge acclaim from critics, with NME saying in a five-star review that it’s “hard to see how cinema can get much bigger than this”.
However, one person who was less of a fan was classics professor Emily Wilson, whose notable 2017 translation of Homer’s poem was an influence on the film. In a scathing write-up for the London Review Of Books, she argued that Nolan’s adaptation lacked “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth” and failed to capture the complexity of the original author’s ideas.
Meanwhile, Cruise has defended Digger’s poor box office numbers. “When I am making [movies], I’m not going, ‘Opening weekend!’ I feel very much like we’re going to make something that is a lasting piece of cinema,” he said during an appearance on the On Film With Kevin McCarthy podcast.
He went on to say that after so much success across his career, he asks himself “how can I make a film that can translate and last and evolve? And I feel that is Digger. It’s one of those movies.”
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