The first full trailer for Digger arrived July 13, set to a re-orchestrated version of Talking Heads\u2019 \u201cBurning Down the House.\u201d Tom Cruise is barely recognizable beneath prosthetics, a white comb-over, a Southern drawl, and a potbelly: he plays Digger Rockwell, a billionaire oil tycoon whose $18 trillion bad call triggers an apocalyptic ecological disaster. The rest of the film follows his attempt to spin himself as the solution.
It is Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s first English-language feature since The Revenant (2015), and his first comedy. Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are releasing it October 2 in theaters and IMAX. The director\u2019s own description: \u201cA Comedy of Catastrophic Proportions.\u201d
The ensemble is precise. John Goodman plays the President. Sandra H\u00fcller aids Digger in his crisis management. Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wilde, Emma D\u2019Arcy, and Michael Stuhlbarg round out the cast. Emmanuel Lubezki, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s longtime cinematographer, shot the film on 35mm VistaVision.
I\u00f1\u00e1rritu conceived the project following The Revenant; he and Cruise began talking seriously in 2019, while Cruise was midway through Top Gun: Maverick. Principal photography ran from November 2024 to May 2025 at Pinewood Studios in the UK. Budget: $125 million. At CinemaCon in April, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu said: \u201cWe know he is fearless, but embodying this character is another kind of fearless.\u201d Cruise told the audience: \u201cI have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither has Alejandro when we went in, ever. And when you see this film, it\u2019s totally original.\u201d
Critics who have seen early footage have compared Digger to Dr. Strangelove. The question the film seems designed to ask is whether Digger Rockwell is the most dangerous kind of man: the one who genuinely believes he can fix what he broke.
