‘Digger’, the last film to be released from Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. before its acquisition by Paramount Skydance Corp closes on October 6, was a major disappointment at the box office, taking in just $8 million on its opening weekend.

According to a Bloomberg report yesterday, it is the latest commercial failure in a string of setbacks from Warner Bros. this year, including ‘The Bride!’ and ‘The End of Oak Street’, which have cumulatively lost the studio hundreds of millions of dollars.

The movie (‘Digger’) is directed by Alejandro Iñárritu and stars Tom Cruise in the lead role of a theatre actor playing an oil tycoon responsible for an environmental catastrophe.

‘Digger’ marks a departure from Cruise’s performances in the past two decades, which have been anchored mostly in action genre franchises such as ‘Mission: Impossible’.

‘Digger’, as per the Bloomberg report, received mixed reviews from critics, and ultimately opened in fifth place, according to figures from (US) industry tracker Rentrak, behind titles such as ‘Verity’ from Amazon.com Inc.’s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio and ‘Resident Evil’ from Sony Pictures Entertainment, despite a strong marketing campaign.

The film studio chiefs at Warner Bros., Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, will not be joining the merged company once the deal closes next week, Bloomberg reported on Friday (Oct. 2).

The future movie slate pledged by Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison, which includes 30 releases annually from the two combined studios, will be overseen by current Paramount Pictures chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.

Peter Safran and James Gunn, who run the DC Studios label at Warner Bros., will join the new company, Bloomberg reported, as well as HBO Chief Executive Officer Casey Bloys and several other executives from Warner Bros. Discovery.