Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary have released the official trailer for Digger, the first collaboration between Tom Cruise and four-time Academy Award winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and it is unlike anything either man has made before.
Cruise is nearly unrecognizable as Digger Rockwell, a blunt, pot-bellied Southern oil baron who may have triggered a massive global ecological disaster and is now tasked with saving the world from the very catastrophe he unleashed. Iñárritu has described the film as “a comedy of catastrophic proportions,” and the trailer delivers exactly that energy, drawing comparisons to Dr. Strangelove for the current era.
Sophie Wilde stars in the film alongside Cruise, joined by an ensemble that includes Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Emma D’Arcy, Michael Stuhlbarg and John Goodman as a U.S. president who feels oddly familiar and timely.
The transformation Cruise underwent for the role has been months in the making. “It took me 40 years to become this character,” Cruise said at a trailer reveal event on the Warner Bros. lot last week. Iñárritu added that the process was astonishing to witness. “The film needed Tom,” he said. “We wanted to work together since the beginning of the century.”
The film was shot in VistaVision on a 1954-designed camera, with Iñárritu reuniting with his The Revenant cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. The screenplay was co-written by Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman.
For Cruise, Digger marks his first non-franchise film since American Made in 2017. “I have never had something that could challenge me in this way,” he said. “When you see this film, it’s totally original.”
Cruise also joined TikTok over the weekend to promote the film, amassing more than 1.4 million followers and racking up over 8 million views across his first three posts.
Digger opens exclusively in theaters and IMAX on October 2.