‘Digger’ Trailer Released: Tom Cruise Transforms Into A Southern Oil Baron

Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for Digger, the highly-anticipated collaboration between Tom Cruise and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Cruise transforms almost beyond recognition for the role, adopting a thick Southern accent, a pot belly and thinning white hair styled in a combover to play Digger Rockwell, an oil baron at the center of an ecological and geopolitical catastrophe. John Goodman plays the President of the United States. Iñárritu described the film at CinemaCon as “a wild comedy of catastrophic proportions,” with Deadline comparing it to “Doctor Strangelove for the Trump era.” Cruise said of the role, “It took me 40 years to become this character,” per Deadline.

The collaboration has been years in the making. Cruise first saw Iñárritu’s debut feature Amores Perros in 2000 and became an early champion of the director’s work, showing the film to friends for years before the two ever met. The pair began discussing Digger around 2019 while Cruise was filming Top Gun: Maverick, per Variety.

Iñárritu told Variety of the project, “It took me 10 years to do this film, because I wasn’t looking for a story. I was looking for the right way of saying it.” On casting Cruise, he said, “People often ask me why I chose Tom to play Digger. To me, that’s like asking somebody why you drink water when you are thirsty? Because it’s what you need.”

Cruise told Variety of hearing the pitch, “I’m listening to everything that’s in his mind, so that I can understand that, and then I know how to contribute to it, and bring that collaboration together. It was beautiful.”

The film marks Iñárritu’s first English-language feature since The Revenant in 2015 and Cruise’s first film with Warner Bros. since signing a theatrical deal with the studio in January 2024. Principal photography took place at Pinewood Studios in the UK over six months, shot on 35mm film using VistaVision by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.

Who stars in ‘Digger’?

Alongside Cruise and Goodman, the cast includes Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wilde, Emma D’Arcy and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Iñárritu directs from a screenplay co-written with Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr. and Sabina Berman. Iñárritu, Cruise and Mary Parent produce.

When does ‘Digger’ open in theaters?

Digger opens in theaters Oct. 2.

Watch the trailer below:

Featured image photo credit: Photo: Warner Bros.