Close call: Leonardo DiCaprio nearly starred in one of 2026’s biggest box office flops

Here we go — one of those Hollywood "sliding doors" moments. Leonardo DiCaprio just missed getting tangled up in one of 2026's most embarrassing big-budget box office faceplants. Instead, it was Tom Cruise who took the hit, headlining Alejandro G. Iñárritu's new film that ended up losing a truly jaw-dropping amount of money. It’s the sort of close shave that makes you wonder what on earth studios are doing with those greenlight meetings.

Digger is tracking for a $150 million loss after a disappointing box office run.

So, this film, Digger — a satirical comedy that’s managed to split both regular punters and critics right down the middle — saw Cruise in the lead. But it wasn’t always meant to be his train wreck. Originally, Iñárritu pitched the project to Netflix, and back then DiCaprio was the bloke everyone expected in the main role. That didn’t pan out, and the dominoes that followed are nothing if not textbook Hollywood chaos.

How Did Cruise End Up in the Hot Seat?

Iñárritu, who last paired with DiCaprio for 2015’s The Revenant (the one that finally won Leo his Oscar), had mapped out Digger under a completely different working title for Netflix. It wasn’t until after the streamer pushed out Don’t Look Up — which also starred DiCaprio, and, coincidentally, wasn’t that far off in premise from Digger — that things got dicey. With all the overlap, Iñárritu bailed from Netflix and took his film to Legendary.

At that point, Tom Cruise boarded the project. This move sealed Digger’s fate as part of Cruise’s splashy yet non-exclusive franchise and originals deal at Warner Bros. Discovery. All this sounded good in a pitch meeting. Cruise plus Iñárritu equals "open cheque," apparently — at least to Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, who ran the numbers through their preview-happy comps system and waved through an eye-watering $125 million budget.

And Then, Disaster

The reality: Digger has clawed together about $20 million since its release on 2 October. Not exactly the blockbuster anyone was banking on, and a harsh lesson for the analytics crowd. For Cruise, whose name usually means guaranteed box office, it’s a rare miss. Meanwhile, I can’t help but think DiCaprio’s probably feeling grateful he dodged a grenade.

• Tom Cruise leads the cast, which also features Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Robert John Burke, Emma D’Arcy, Burn Gorman, and a handful of others.

It’s one of those strange behind-the-scenes stories that seem to happen all the time in Hollywood. The right star walks away, the next in line steps up, and suddenly you’ve got $150 million in red ink wondering how it all went wrong.