Anne Hathaway defends Tom Cruise's awards bait mega-flop Digger... as her film Verity defeats it at box office

Anne Hathaway has showered acclaim on Tom Cruise's new movie Digger in the wake of its dismal box office results.

Released last Friday, the black comedy stars Cruise as an oil tycoon who triggers an environmental crisis he then finds himself scrambling to fix, with John Goodman in the supporting role of an authoritarian US president.

Although the movie was once tipped as potentially netting Cruise his first Oscar, a raft of scathing reviews left it with a 52 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Digger collected a mere $8 million in America over its opening weekend and a further $12 million abroad, against a production budget of at least $125 million that some sources said eventually swelled to $180 million, via Variety.

However Hathaway, 43, whose new film Verity bowed the same day as Digger and triumphed at the box office, has lent a gracious word of support to Cruise's flop.

She gave the movie five stars on Letterboxd and hailed the movie as 'brilliant' in the first-ever review she has ever published on the website.

'I loved this brilliant movie. It’s smart and trippy and aggressive and funny and ambitious,' wrote the The Princess Diaries actress. 'It’s worth making the time see and decide for yourself what you make of it. For me? 10/10.'

The Daily Mail has contacted a representative for Cruise for comment. 

It was announced last month that Hathaway has been cast alongside Cruise in an upcoming sequel to his hit 1990 NASCAR drama Days of Thunder.

The original Days of Thunder starred Cruise with Nicole Kidman, who struck up a rea-life romance with him and became the second of his three ex-wives. 

Digger was helmed by Mexican auteur Alejandro G Inarritu, who previously directed Leonardo DiCaprio to his first Oscar victory in the adventure film The Revenant.

Batman star Michael Keaton also landed his inaugural Academy Award nomination for an Inarritu movie, the surrealistic 2014 dark comedy Birdman. 

Cruise, who energetically promoted Digger amid a chorus of Oscars speculation, insisted he was 'so proud' of the film movie amid its disastrous box office opening.

'I am so honored to have had the opportunity to create this film alongside such talented artists,' he wrote in the caption of a behind-the-scenes Instagram album.

'Thank you to the entire cast and crew for your dedication, hard work, and joy. The experience was truly unforgettable and I'm so proud of what we created.' 

Digger also received a spirited defense from filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, whose 2017 movie The Shape of Water won the Oscars for best picture and best director.

Del Toro lashed out at the critical reviews of the movie, singling out an IGN post with the title: 'The theater experience won't change your mind on Digger, and the laughs that are there still will be when it hits HBO Max.'

'Entirely Petty headline,' del Toro sniffed on X. 'Love it or not. And, yes, I do. The film delivers in scale, ambition and reach at a theatrical screen level. Daring, bold and Cinematically complex. Decidedly a Theatrical experience.' 

Despite its industry fans, Digger has emerged as one of the most catastrophic flops of Cruise's career, in a category with such releases as the 2017 reboot of The Mummy and the 2007 political thriller Lions for Lambs.

Meanwhile Hathaway's newest release Verity, an erotic thriller that also stars Dakota Johnson and 1990s teen idol Josh Hartnett, has enjoyed a $32.6 million opening weekend domestically and topped the US box office.

The picture is based on a novel by Colleen Hoover, who is now most notorious as the author of It Ends with Us, the basis of the film that led to the feverishly publicized legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.

Hathaway has experienced a banner year professionally, including the release of her smash hit movie The Devil Wears Prada 2 in May.

The sequel reunited her with a number of her co-stars from the beloved 2006 original, including Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Two months later, moviegoers were able to see her in Christopher Nolan's adaptation of The Odyssey, which has made over $1 billion at the box office so far.

Matt Damon fronted the project as Odysseus, with Hathaway as his wife Penelope and Tom Holland as their son Telemachus amid an all-star cast including Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Samantha Morton and Travis Scott.