Anne Hathaway Just Gave Tom Cruise’s Box Office Bomb a 5-Star Rave, and Her Review Is Making Everyone Rethink Digger

Hollywood just delivered one of the sweetest plot twists of the year, and it did not come from a movie. It came from a movie review. Anne Hathaway, the very actress whose film steamrolled Tom Cruise at the box office last weekend, has just handed his struggling Digger a glowing five star review, and her verdict is making everyone look at the film twice.

This is not a polite celebrity compliment, either. Hathaway put her name on her first ever Letterboxd review to tell the world exactly what she thinks of Cruise’s divisive new film. And what she thinks is this: it is brilliant.

What Anne Hathaway Actually Wrote

Hathaway had never written a Letterboxd review before this week, according to Entertainment Weekly. For her debut on the platform, she chose Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s climate crisis satire and gave it the full five stars out of five.

“I loved this brilliant movie,” she wrote. “It’s smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious.” She went on to say the film is “worth making the time” to see so audiences can “decide for yourself what you make of it.” Then she closed with a line that is already being screenshotted everywhere: “For me? 10/10.”

The Hollywood Handle shared her review on X alongside a photo of her smiling next to Cruise, and the internet promptly lost its mind. Why? Because nobody expected this. Least of all the people who watched her movie bury his at the box office just days earlier.

The Box Office Elephant in the Room

Let us be honest about the context, because it is what makes this story so delicious. Digger and Hathaway’s own Verity opened on the exact same weekend, and the result was not close. The Colleen Hoover adaptation, which pairs Hathaway with Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, pulled in $32 million domestically. Digger managed just $8 million.

That $8 million number hurts even more with the details around it. Digger also trailed the third weekend of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil and the second weekend of David Ayer’s Heart of the Beast. With a reported budget of at least $125 million, reports suggest Warner Bros. could be staring at losses of up to $200 million. The critics are split down the middle with a 51 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, audiences sit at 71 percent, the CinemaScore is a C plus, and the Metacritic number is a cold 45.

In other words, Hathaway is publicly standing behind a film that almost everyone else has declared dead on arrival. That takes guts.

She Is Not the Only One Defending It

Here is where it gets interesting. Hathaway is not shouting into the void. Ron Howard, Guillermo del Toro, and Glen Powell have all publicly praised the divisive film as well. IndieWire’s Anne Thompson went further and called it a brave and gorgeous art film, arguing that mainstream audiences might not embrace it but that it could play beautifully with Academy voters.

So what are these people seeing that the box office is not? Let us look at the movie itself.

What Digger Is Actually About

Digger is a dark comedy that casts Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a powerful oil tycoon whose arrogance and greed trigger a global catastrophe. He then races to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he unleashed destroys everything.

The cast is stacked with prestige names: Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Jesse Plemons all show up. The film was shot entirely in VistaVision, the large format process that gives it that sweeping, almost old Hollywood texture.

It is also deliberately uncomfortable viewing. This is a satire about the climate crisis wrapped inside a character study of a narcissistic billionaire, and Iñárritu does not sand down the edges. Some viewers found it messy and alienating. Others, clearly, found it electrifying.

Why Hathaway’s Praise Hits Different

There is a generosity to this that deserves to be noticed. Hathaway did not have to do this. Her own movie just beat his by roughly four to one. She could have stayed quiet, enjoyed her victory lap, and let Digger become a punchline.

Instead she used her very first Letterboxd review, a platform film nerds take very seriously, to throw the film a lifeline. That is a real move from someone who loves cinema more than she loves a scoreboard.

And there is history between these two that makes it warmer. Back in July, Cruise publicly praised Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which stars Hathaway alongside Matt Damon. He wrote, “Wow! To Chris, Emma, and ALL of your brilliant cast and crew. Thank you for an amazing night in a movie theater. I can’t wait to see it again!” He even gathered the employees of the AMC Lincoln Square, the theater where he watched it, to join him at the screening.

So when the internet wondered whether Cruise would return the favor and say anything about Verity, Hathaway went one better. She did not wait for a compliment. She gave one first, and she aimed it at the movie everyone else had given up on.

The Future Co-Star Factor

There is one more layer to this story that has fans grinning. Hathaway, 43, is currently expecting her third child, and after she gives birth and takes some time off, she is set to co star with Cruise in the upcoming Days of Thunder sequel, per JustJared.

So this is not just a one off act of kindness between rivals. These two are about to share a movie set. Hathaway cheering on her future co star’s passion project, five stars and all, looks less like a publicity move and more like genuine excitement about working with the guy.

Could Digger Become a Cult Classic?

Here is the thought nobody is saying out loud yet: Digger might be a future cult classic hiding inside a box office disaster. Films with this exact profile, divisive on release, championed by famous filmmakers, despised by accountants, have a habit of finding their real audience years later.

Hathaway’s review could end up being the opening line of that redemption story. When an Oscar winning actress who just beat your movie puts her name on a five star review and tells people to “decide for yourself what you make of it,” people listen.

The numbers were brutal. The critics were split. But Anne Hathaway just gave Digger the one thing money cannot buy: a second chance at being watched with fresh eyes. And honestly? That might be worth more than $8 million.

For the full story on how Verity and Digger collided at the box office last weekend, including the numbers behind the showdown, and for more on Hathaway’s big year alongside co star Dakota Johnson’s wild week, keep following CineVibe.