Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger has its world premiere tomorrow, September 22, at the Royal Film Performance in London's Leicester Square. It is Iñárritu's first film since Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) and his most expensive. Warner Bros. is distributing the film, the first to emerge from the studio's production pact with Tom Cruise, at a reported budget of $125 million.
Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an aging oil tycoon who accidentally triggers an ecological catastrophe and then races to position himself as its savior. The supporting cast includes Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Emma D'Arcy.
The film took ten years to develop. Iñárritu has said the collaboration began after Cruise saw Amores Perros, Iñárritu's 2000 debut. Production ran from November 2024 to May 2025 at Pinewood Studios, shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki on 35mm VistaVision using custom vintage Leica lenses designed specifically for the production.
"The disaster isn't a comet or an earthquake, or an alien invasion," Iñárritu told Empire. "The disaster is us." He described the film's central premise as a reframe of the entire genre: "Most disaster movies ask, 'What if something terrible happened to humanity?' Our question was much simpler: 'What if humanity happened to humanity?'"
The London premiere is the 73rd Royal Film Performance, serving as the flagship fundraiser for the Film and TV Charity. Warner Bros. chose to bypass the traditional fall festival circuit in favor of the charity event. The film opens in U.S. theaters October 2.
