Ashhar Alam

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have unveiled the first extended look at Digger at CinemaCon, marking a high-profile collaboration between Tom Cruise and Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The dark comedy features Cruise in a dramatically unconventional role, as per Deadline.

Long kept under wraps, the film introduces Cruise as Digger Rockwell, described as “the most powerful man in the world,” who must race against time to prove he is humanity’s saviour before a disaster he allegedly triggered leads to global destruction.

The trailer reveals a striking transformation of Cruise, who appears balding and heavyset while portraying a volatile industrialist caught between personal absurdities and catastrophic consequences. In one scene, he consults a doctor about his cat, only to be told it has “two weeks or five minutes” to live.

In another sequence, Digger, dressed in pajamas and speaking in a Southern accent, lashes out at himself with a baseball bat, declaring: “Hustle is something you sorely lack, you lazy piece of sh*t!”

The footage also includes a tense Zoom call in which a scientist warns him about a “five-foot crack” caused by his operations, an allegation he brushes off with crude confidence. As the story escalates, it is revealed that his business activities have triggered an environmental catastrophe, threatening the “structural integrity of the entire ice shelf,” according to Deadline.

John Goodman plays the President, who outlines a worst-case scenario involving mass displacement and trillions in losses, insisting, “Digger got us into this, and Digger is going to dig us out.” Meanwhile, Cruise’s character argues, “Panic is a resource… Panic wakes people up.”

Speaking at CinemaCon, Cruise described the project as “ne plus ultra,” adding, “This kind of movie is why I want to make movies.” He also revealed that he first connected with Iñárritu nearly seven years ago and even rode his motorcycle “in the middle of the night” to meet the director during the filming of Top Gun: Maverick.

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Iñárritu praised Cruise’s performance, calling it “another kind of fearless,” and said he was unprepared for the transformation the actor undergoes in the film. “This role possibly could be his most challenging,” he noted.

Directed by Iñárritu and co-written with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolas Giacobone, and Sabina Berman, Digger is slated for theatrical release on October 2.