Ben Affleck has defended Tom Cruise's Digger, saying the pile-on over its box office failure feels like "high-school bullying" and will only lead studios to make safer films. He spoke on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast.
"It's a little bit like the high-school bullying thing, with people who hadn't even seen movies," Affleck said. "You see it happening now, frankly, with Digger."
He called it an ambitious, interesting movie made by talented people. "If you punish movies that take risks, guess what you're going to get?" he said.
"A bunch of homogenized movies." He added that "you cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing," and that this means you will sometimes look bad. He compared the reaction to his own experience in the mid-2000s, when public opinion of him as a movie star turned sour.
"It's one thing to be unknown," he said. "It's another thing to be like, 'No, we know who you are.
We just don't like you.'" Digger, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, stars Cruise as an oil magnate whose drilling causes an ecological disaster.
It opened on 2 October with $8 million domestically, fell 60% in its second weekend and has grossed about $35 million worldwide. Variety has reported its production budget at more than $160 million, plus around $100 million for marketing, and said it needs about $350 million to break even.
Critics and audiences have been split: it holds 53% on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer and 74% on its Popcornmeter. Industry analysts note that high-budget original projects face unique challenges in the modern theatrical landscape, where superhero franchises and established intellectual properties often dominate box office revenues.
Affleck's comments have sparked widespread discussion across entertainment platforms regarding the pressures filmmakers face today.