Los Angeles, Nov 3 (IANS) Hollywood actor John Goodman has shared that the brutal reviews aimed at the recently released film ‘Digger’, which starred Tom Cruise in the titular role, “hurt” him.
The 74-year-old actor has a supporting role as a fictional United States President in the film, which has grossed just $50 million on a budget reported at over $160 million, and he has insisted the negative reaction “kind of killed us before we opened”.
The actor graced the latest episode of the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast, and said, “Yeah, it, uh, it hurt”.
He added that criticism levied at the movie told film fans that it was a “good reason for people to avoid it”.
However, he argued, “I’m proud of it, and I had a ball doing it. It was a good six months out of my life”.
The film stars Tom Cruise, 64, as an oil baron confronting a global catastrophe after a malfunction at one of his Greenland drilling rigs threatens Europe, and it has split critics. Goodman, who admitted he likes a “big-engine car” insisted the story is a “nice wake-up call” to himself and others to be conscious about their place in the world. And he insisted that the negative reaction doesn’t mean ‘Digger’ can’t find its audience in the future.
He said, “I think everything I’ve done for the Coen brothers flopped, initially, so, who cares? I’ve still got people running up to me in the streets about Barton Fink, and, naturally, (The Big) Lebowski”.
Meanwhile, the reaction hasn’t been all bad, with Guillermo del Toro, a friend of director Alejandro G. Inarritu, speaking out to defend the project, which he hailed as “daring, bold and Cinematically complex”.
He wrote on social media, “The film delivers in scale, ambition and reach at a theatrical screen level”.
–IANS
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