Iñárritu on "Digger": Cruise underwent an extraordinary transformation for the role

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I was among the members of the press invited to a trailer launch event last week for director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s next film, Digger , starring Tom Cruise. Billed as “a comedy of catastrophic proportions,” the trailer – now online – shows a nearly unrecognizable Cruise as tycoon Digger Rockwell, whose oil drilling operation sparks a global disaster.

Both Iñárritu (in a pre-recorded intro) and Cruise, who was present for a moderated Q&A, said the film is unlike anything either artist had ever done before. “The film needed Tom,” Iñárritu said. “We [have] wanted to work together since the beginning of the century. I admired him as an actor for years, and that wasn't a surprise for me. The surprise was discovering that the human being behind the actor was just as extraordinary as the performances I will see throughout his career.”

Iñárritu added, “The transformation he went through was astonishing. ‘Alejandro, it took me 40 years to become this character,’ he told me once. And I think we both know what it means to carry an entire career into a single moment like this. We both knew that throughout our journeys, we had never done anything even close to this.”

The filmmaker – who won back-to-back Oscars for directing Birdman and The Revenant – said, “Making this film demanded everything I had. I have never prepared a project with this level of precision. Every frame, every lens, every color, every costume, every face, every context, every object, every layer and symbol, nothing here is an accident. We shot on VistaVision, because cinema deserves scale.”

After Iñárritu’s message concluded, Cruise took the stage and said he had wanted to work with the filmmaker since he saw his 2000 psychological drama Amores Perros . “I’d never heard of him before. And he and I didn't meet for many, many years,” Cruise explained. “He came to me with this project, Digger, which he'd been working on for a couple of years by then. And he came to me, I guess now seven years ago, something like that, as he was developing, working on it, and then we just worked on it together.”

Cruise was awed by “the level of detail, the skill, the layers of making this film,” adding, “He's never made something like this before, nor have I.” Cruise remarked, “I have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither has Alejandro when we went in, ever. And when you see this film, it's totally original.”

Digger is a dark comedy – the trailer has Dr. Strangelove vibes – but, as Cruise pointed out, “there's not one rhythm or comedy-fits-all” approach to realizing the material. For Cruise, finding the character of Digger Rockwell meant being in sync with the tone of the film Iñárritu wanted:

“If you start to feel the musicality of the character, it has a rhythm, and it's not a rhythm like anything else. So the behavior of a character, the movement of a character, these are things that as we're looking at the makeup side, as you're developing, you got to go, is this our tone? Is it drama? Is it comedy? Is it too much? You're dialing it in.”

The marketing around the film has so far leaned into Digger being the pinnacle of Cruise’s 45-year screen career , with the 64-year-old actor acknowledging the importance of Iñárritu’s movie to him after a lifetime spent learning about filmmaking from his directors and their teams.

“I'm so grateful. It's kind of amazing to be here at this age. I think back to that kid on the set looking into different departments, and those people that were gracious enough to be able to share that knowledge, and I was like, ‘I know I don't understand it now. One day I will understand it more,’ and I did. I feel fortunate. To be there off camera and see Paul Newman acting as Scorsese is directing him. I recognize how fortunate I was, just absorbing it.”

Of Digger, Cruise mused, “There's nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, ‘Let's do this. And I trust you and whatever we're going to do, I know this is going to be a hell of an experience and let's come together and let's do it. Let's all do it.’"

Warner Bros. will release Digger in theaters on October 2, 2026.