Tom Cruise Trades Stunts for Satire in First Trailer for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s ‘Digger’
Warner Bros. has dropped the first trailer for Digger, the upcoming feature from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The project represents one of the most surprising on-screen transformations of Tom Cruise’s career, with the actor stepping far outside his usual wheelhouse.
In the filmmaker’s latest, Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a portly, larger-than-life Southern oil magnate with brusque manners who seems to have his hands in a global ecological catastrophe. The first footage teases a world on the brink, with ice melting fast. Although Rockwell is the one who started the crisis, he is presented as the only one who can end it. The paradox puts him in the Oval Office where the President of the United States, played by John Goodman, gives him the job of saving the world.
A Tone of Grotesque Satire
The trailer promises a potent mix of grotesque comedy, political satire and disaster movie. Goodman’s rendition of the commander-in-chief is a caricature, mixing elements of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, with the President nodding off at very inconvenient moments. The resulting atmosphere is reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, adapted for today’s political and environmental anxieties.
To play the zany tycoon, Cruise totally transformed his body. Almost unrecognisable, the actor sports a grizzled beard, thinning hair, prosthetic makeup, a thick southern drawl and a frame totally unlike his usual action-hero build. It’s a performance that immediately brings to mind Les Grossman, the vulgar, aggressive studio executive Cruise played in 2008’s “Tropic Thunder.” Again, it looks like Cruise enjoys playing an exaggerated, larger-than-life persona, quite a departure from the straight-laced hero of Mission: Impossible and Top Gun.
A Long-Awaited Collaboration
Iñárritu said he started thinking about the project right after he finished The Revenant. There was no script, no film at the time, but the director was haunted by a recurring idea and a specific image of the hero, whom he always imagined to be Tom Cruise. The pair had been seeking a project to work on together since the early 2000s, and Iñárritu said the story specifically called for the actor’s signature energy and dedication.
The production reunites the Mexican filmmaker with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who has previously won an Academy Award for his work on The Revenant. The film was shot in VistaVision, using a vintage 1954 VistaVision camera. Digger marks Inarritu’s first English-language feature film in more than a decade, and promises to reveal a whole new side to both the acclaimed director and his headlining star.
The film will premiere in theaters on October 1, 2026.
