Tom Cruise Goes Full Character Actor In Wild New Trailer For “Digger”

Forget everything you think you know about a Tom Cruise movie. No motorcycle jumps off cliffs, no fighter jets, no sprinting-Cruise meme in the making. In Digger, the guy disappears (potbelly, combover, thick Southern drawl and all) into a role that couldn’t be further from Ethan Hunt or Maverick.

So What Is Digger?

Digger is the long-awaited team-up between Cruise and two-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the filmmaker behind Birdman, The Revenant, and Bardo. It’s Iñárritu’s first English-language feature since The Revenant wrapped over a decade ago, and it’s being sold as a black comedy. Warner Bros. is calling it “a comedy of catastrophic proportions.”

Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, described as “the most powerful man in the world,” a billionaire oil tycoon whose company appears to have triggered a massive ecological disaster. The trailer frames Digger as a blunt, Southern-talking oil baron who may have set off a global catastrophe tied to a rapidly melting iceberg, and who gets ordered by the sitting U.S. President (played by John Goodman) to fix the mess he made.

Basically: the man who broke the world has to convince everyone he’s the only one who can save it.

Tom Cruise Is Unrecognizable

When the trailer dropped yesterday, all anyone could talk about was Cruise’s transformation. He plays the role with a thick Southern accent, a potbelly, and a combed-over head of white hair, about as far from his usual leading-man mode as he’s gone since he buried himself under prosthetics to play studio boss Les Grossman in “Tropic Thunder.”

Cruise has been telling people this role was the “biggest challenge of my career” on the press circuit. At the Warner Bros. event unveiling the trailer, he said the film’s level of detail and craft pushed both him and Iñárritu into territory neither of them had attempted before. At CinemaCon he also talked about being a longtime fan of Iñárritu’s work. And he’s called the collaboration the culmination of a career spanning more than 40 years in the business, a project seven years in the making, since Iñárritu first pitched it to him not long after The Revenant.

The Cast Is Stacked

Unlike some of his other movies, Tom Cruise isn’t carrying this one alone. The ensemble includes:

• Riz Ahmed
• John Goodman as the President
• Sandra Hüller
• Michael Stuhlbarg
• Jesse Plemons
• Robert John Burke
• Emma D’Arcy
• Burn Gorman
• Sophie Wilde

That’s four Oscar winners and nominees rounding out Cruise’s supporting cast, which tells you how seriously this project has been taken behind the scenes long before a single frame leaked out.

The Pedigree Behind The Camera

This isn’t just a Cruise vehicle with a prestige director slapped on top. The below-the-line talent is loaded:

• Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (three-time Oscar winner, longtime Iñárritu collaborator)
• Editing: Stephen Mirrione and Conor O’Neill
• Production design: Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson
• Costume design: Jacqueline West
• Makeup and hair: Alessandro Bertolazzi
• Prosthetic makeup: Kazu Hiro (the guy responsible for turning actors into Winston Churchill and Dick Cheney)
• Casting: Francine Maisler
• Score: Cosmo Sheldrake

The screenplay comes from Iñárritu himself alongside Birdman scribes Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolás Giacobone, plus Sabina Berman, with Iñárritu and Berman credited on the story.

Shot The Old-School Way, Literally

True to Iñárritu’s obsession with format, Digger was shot on 35mm film in VistaVision, the same widescreen format Paul Thomas Anderson used on One Battle After Another. Production ran for about six months in and around the UK’s Pinewood Studios. It’s a format built for scale and texture, and early buzz suggests the trailer is packed with the kind of striking, oversized imagery Iñárritu built his reputation on.

For what it’s worth, one IndieWire critic who saw the footage at CinemaCon reportedly ranked it among the best things he saw that day, a strong early sign heading into release.

When Can You Actually See It?

Mark your calendars, as Digger will be released in theaters and IMAX across North America on October 2, 2026.

The Bottom Line

Between the total physical transformation, an Oscar-magnet supporting cast, an A-list crew, and a director who doesn’t do anything small, Digger has the makings of one of the most talked-about releases of the fall. Whether it’s a career pivot, an awards play, or just Tom Cruise proving he can still surprise us after four decades in the spotlight, this is one to have on your radar.

Check out the trailer below, and let us know what you think of it!