John Goodman has opened up about Digger’s muted critical response and disappointing box office performance.
The Emmy winner played a fictitious US president in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s recent movie, which starred Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon who causes a catastrophic global incident that only he can fix.
Digger cost over $160 million (around £121 million) to make, and with added promotion costs, the film needed around $350 million (around £259 million) to break even.
Ultimately, it grossed just $50 million (around £37 million), making it one of the biggest box office bombs not just of this year, but in movie history.
Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, which was recorded around the time of Digger’s disappointing opening weekend, John admitted his disappointment at how the film was received.
He ultimately blamed the critics for the film’s failure to get audiences into cinemas, stating his belief that the poor early reactions turned people against the satirical drama.
“It hurt,” John told the podcast host Josh Horowitz. “It kinda killed us before we even opened.
“[Headlines saying] ‘this will only make $5’ were a good reason for people to avoid it.”
Critics’ early reactions to Digger were mixed to poor, with some who saw the film calling it “aggressively unfunny,” “pretentious” and generally “pointless.”
Still, despite being a box office bomb and holding a score of just 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, John maintained that he is still proud of the project.
“I had a ball doing it,” he enthused. “It was a good six months out of my life. It is a huge swing. It’s going to be around for a long time.”
When Josh asked the Roseanne actor whether he still cares about critics and audiences 40 years into his career as an actor, he admitted the response did still affect him.
“Maybe I am getting old and pathetic and it’s like, ‘Don’t hit me again!’,” he quipped. “I put so much into this film and here you go. I am over it now. I am proud I did it.”
However, John insisted he is also aware that “everything I have done for the Coen Brothers flopped initially”, commenting: “So who cares, man? I still have people coming up to me in the streets asking me about Barton Fink and Big Lebowski.”
On Ben Affleck’s own interview on Happy Sad Confused last month, the Gone Girl actor condemned the public bashing of Digger, saying the reaction to the film had left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if it’s the most exciting thing to happen. And you think like, it’s a pretty ambitious, interesting movie made by interesting people who have talent,” the actor, writer and director explained.
He also defended director Alejandro G. Iñárritu for taking such a big swing, and shared his concern that films like Digger flopping will stop Hollywood from taking chances on more experimental projects.
“Everybody wants to count the money, what it lost or whatever,” he lamented. “To me, I just think, if you punish movies that take risks, guess what you’re going to get? A bunch of shitty homogenised movies.
“You cannot do something interesting without taking a big swing. And that means you’re going to sometimes look bad.”
Fellow Oscar winner Anne Hathaway also defended Digger, calling it “brilliant”.
“It’s smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious,” the Odyssey star wrote on her Letterboxd account. “It’s worth making the time see and decide for yourself what you make of it. For me? 10/10.”
