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What is it they say about one person’s misfortune…? Well, Melania Trump’s staff seem to be embracing that opportunistic sentiment with regards to Digger ’s woes at the box office.
As reported earlier this week, Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise as a powerful oil tycoon who has triggered an environmental disaster, made just $8 million in the US and $20 million in total globally in its opening weekend.
Considering Digger had a production budget of up to $180m (plus hefty marketing), this means the divisive film is on track to become one of 2026’s biggest flops with estimated losses projected at between $150-200 million.
As if that wasn’t bad news enough, some are indulging in schadenfreude and getting their gloat on…
Marc Beckman, a senior advisor to Melania Trump, posted a comparison online, stating that the Cruise-led satire had been outperformed by the biographical film Melania released earlier this year.
“On a per-theater basis, MELANIA outperformed Tom Cruise’s DIGGER by approximately 67%, despite opening in roughly half as many theaters,” wrote Beckman on X.
Granted, Melania was a hit in US cinemas for a non-fiction movie, eventually grossing $16.7 million. However, given that Amzon spent $40 million to acquire the documentary and a reported $35 million to market it, that still makes it a sizeable loss.
Following Beckman’s post, many were quick to point out that the comparison between Melania and Digger was not appropriate. Check out some of the reactions below:
Regardless of Digger ’s misfortunes, you have to hand it to Iñárritu and Cruise for delivering an ambitious piece of cinema.
In Euronews Culture’s review of Digger, we said that the director had made “both the boldest film of 2026 and this year’s wildest misfire.”
“It’s hard to write more about Digger without spoiling Iñárritu’s brave but misguided gambit, but safe to say that once he does pull the rug from under the audience, he leaves viewers with a boated folly that’s both hollow and heavy-handed.”
We also noted how “high concepts are always to be applauded”, even if they end up feeling like “empty theatrics”. Read the full review here.
Conversely, when reviewing Melania at the start of the year, we wrote that it was a “self-congratulatory portrait of privilege, one singularly uninterested in mining anything beyond the surface” and that it was both a “despicable” and “soul-crushingly bleak”. Read the full review here.
Put simply, compared to Melania, Digger is Citizen Kane. Back-handed compliment though that may be, that comparison feels apt.
Euronews Culture interviewed documentary filmmaker Raoul Peck for his 2026 film Orwell: 2+2=5, in which the filmmaker said about the Melania film: “First of all, I wouldn’t call that a film. It’s not even propaganda, because propaganda can be more intelligent. This is basically a publicity stunt. It’s a bribe.”
“This film happened because a network could spend $40 million to make it. I know many other filmmakers who would have loved to have that kind of money to make a more convincing film.”
He added: “Ethically speaking, no documentarian would accept to make a film where the subject is the executive producer of the film and basically calling the shots. That’s ethically unacceptable. That’s why I cannot call it a film.”