Digger Turns Tom Cruise Into the Man Who Broke the Planet

For decades Tom Cruise has saved the world on screen. In Digger, opening October 2, he plays the man who nearly ends it. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s first film since Bardo casts Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an oil baron and the most powerful person alive, and the movie has its world premiere in London today, September 22.

Warner Bros. is selling it as “a comedy of catastrophic proportions,” and the trailers point to a savage satire about money, influence and the talent for bending everyone else to your version of the truth.

The story

Rockwell’s deep-drilling operation accidentally destabilizes a massive ice shelf off Greenland. Rather than take the blame, he throws himself into a manic campaign to rebrand himself as humanity’s rescuer — racing to win the world over before the ecological disaster he set off escalates into a global war.

The studio’s one-line pitch sums it up: the most powerful man in the world races to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he unleashed destroys everything. Iñárritu has described Rockwell as someone who “seduced reality into agreeing with him.”

Cruise disappears into the role

What everyone noticed first in the trailers is the look. Under heavy makeup and prosthetics Cruise has wispy gray hair, a paunch and a weathered face, and he speaks in a broad Southern drawl. For a star whose brand is built on doing his own stunts and playing the hero, it is the most dramatic transformation of his career.

Speaking at a trailer event on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Cruise recalled watching Iñárritu’s 2000 debut Amores Perros and wanting to work with him ever since. The two first discussed teaming up in 2019, during production on Top Gun: Maverick. Iñárritu arrived with an idea he had been nursing for a couple of years, and they developed it together from there. Cruise also produces.

The ensemble

Iñárritu surrounded his star with a deep bench of character actors:

• Riz Ahmed plays Ganesh, a scientist who serves as a presidential aide;
• John Goodman is President Compson, an authoritarian commander in chief;
• Sandra Hüller is Emma Rockwell, Digger’s half-sister and business partner;
• Michael Stuhlbarg plays the Vice President;
• Jesse Plemons plays Kenny;
• Emma D’Arcy plays Lina;
• Sophie Wilde, Robert John Burke, Burn Gorman, Pip Torrens and Mercedes Hernández round out the cast.

The script is by Iñárritu, Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris Jr. and Nicolás Giacobone — the last two shared the Best Original Screenplay Oscar with him for Birdman. Playwright Jez Butterworth has a story credit.

A decade in the making

Iñárritu says the idea first took hold after he finished The Revenant in 2015 and became “a relentless, recurring obsession” over the following ten years. Cruise’s involvement was made official in February 2024.

Cameras rolled at Pinewood Studios outside London on November 7, 2024, and the shoot wrapped in early May 2025 after about six months, under the working title Judy. Production paused for two days in March 2025 when John Goodman needed hip surgery.

Behind the camera is Emmanuel Lubezki, Iñárritu’s regular cinematographer and the winner of three consecutive Oscars, two of them for Birdman and The Revenant. He shot on 35mm film in VistaVision, and the movie will play in IMAX as well as standard theaters. ILM did the visual effects, and British artist Cosmo Sheldrake composed the score, his first for a feature.

The stakes

Digger carries a budget of about $125 million and runs 129 minutes. Iñárritu, Mary Parent and Cruise produced for Legendary Pictures.

When Warner Bros. screened footage at CinemaCon in April, The Hollywood Reporter ranked it among the strongest material of the convention. Reviews had not been published as of this writing; critics get their first look at the London premiere. The open question is whether moviegoers will follow Cruise into a role that inverts everything his persona stands for — and whether Iñárritu’s first English-language movie in a decade lands as sharply as its trailers suggest.

Release date

Warner Bros. Pictures opens Digger in theaters nationwide on October 2. See the cast, stills and trailers on the Digger page in our AMDB database.