A global disaster, a president who can barely stay awake, and a cat that might matter more than the fate of the planet. The first ‘Digger’ trailer reveals an unrecognizable star buried under prosthetics.
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Warner Bros has released the first full trailer for ‘Digger’, and it shows a side of Tom Cruise fans have never seen before. The film comes from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, known for Birdman and The Revenant. It hits theatres on October 2.
Cruise plays a character named Digger Rockwell in the film. He appears under heavy makeup and prosthetics, transformed into an aging, overweight oil tycoon with a Southern drawl. The look is a sharp break from the action hero roles Cruise has built his career on.
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Digger Rockwell runs an energy company. His decisions set off a massive ecological disaster, one that looks like a rapidly melting iceberg situation. The trailer shows him trying to fix the mess, even as the US President, played by John Goodman, pushes him to act fast.
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Warner Bros describes Digger as a comedy of catastrophic proportions. The story follows Rockwell as he tries to prove he can save the world from the disaster his own company caused. Along the way, he seems more worried about his sick pet cat than the crisis itself.
The trailer runs about two and a half minutes. It is set to a reworked version of the Talking Heads song Burning Down the House. Critics who have seen early footage compare the film’s tone to Dr. Strangelove, mixed with the scale of Citizen Kane.
Digger brings together a large ensemble cast. Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons all appear in the trailer. Sophie Wilde and Emma D’Arcy round out the cast as well.
The script comes from Iñárritu, working alongside his Birdman co-writers Nicolás Giacobone and Alexander Dinelaris, along with Sabina Berman.
Iñárritu said the idea for Digger first came to him after finishing The Revenant in 2015. He described it as an idea that stuck with him for years before it turned into a script. He approached Cruise about playing the lead role around seven years ago.
Instead of simply sending Cruise a script, Iñárritu spent several days reading it to him in person. Cruise has said the role took him decades to prepare for, calling it the result of his entire 40 year career in film.
This marks the first time Cruise and Iñárritu have worked together, though Cruise has said he has admired the director’s work since watching his 2000 debut film Amores Perros.
Digger is also Cruise’s first film with Warner Bros since he signed a deal with the studio in 2024 to develop and produce theatrical films. His last project with Warner Bros was Edge of Tomorrow, released back in 2014.
In recent years, Cruise has mostly stuck to franchise work, including the Mission Impossible series. Digger marks a shift toward more character driven, awards focused filmmaking, similar to the way Robert Downey Jr. or Steve Carell have used comedic or dramatic transformations to earn awards attention in the past.
Digger opens in US theatres on October 2, with an IMAX release included. Warner Bros has not yet confirmed a streaming date. Given the studio’s usual pattern, the film is likely to arrive on HBO Max sometime after finishing its run in cinemas.
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