Tom Cruise transforms for Digger in striking first trailer

Tom Cruise unveiled a heavily altered new look as billionaire oil tycoon Digger Rockwell when the first full-length Digger trailer was released online on Monday, 13 July. The footage shifts Cruise away from his recent action-hero image and into a dark comedy about a man trying to contain an ecological catastrophe his own company may have caused.

The Full Story

The trailer introduces Rockwell as a hugely powerful oil executive with a thick Southern accent, thinning white hair and a pronounced belly. According to Variety's trailer account, his company has disturbed a glacier and helped create a crisis that could escalate towards nuclear war.

The scale of the problem becomes clearer when John Goodman's ailing US president tells Rockwell that fixing it could cost as much as $18 trillion. The proposed response is as absurd as the premise: officials consider firing a missile at the iceberg while Rockwell focuses on controlling the public story around the disaster.

Cruise said director Alejandro G. Iñárritu spent several days reading the script aloud to him so he could understand the filmmaker's intent before shaping the character. At a Warner Bros event in Los Angeles, Cruise described the project as a creative challenge unlike anything he had previously attempted.

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.

Iñárritu said the idea first came to him after The Revenant and took about a decade to reach the screen. The film was shot in the UK over six months using VistaVision, while the director was still completing the sound mix in London when the trailer was presented.

Central Figures

Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a billionaire who presents himself as the only man capable of solving the disaster tied to his own business. The character is designed as a sharp break from Ethan Hunt, with the performance built around voice, physicality, makeup and prosthetics rather than large-scale stunt work.

Iñárritu directs from a script written with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman. Emmanuel Lubezki serves as cinematographer, continuing his collaboration with the director. The cast also includes Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde and Emma D'Arcy.

The Data

• 2 October: the confirmed cinema release date listed across the coverage.
• Up to $18 trillion: the possible cost of repairing the fictional catastrophe, giving the satire its deliberately outsized stakes.
• About 10 years: the period Iñárritu said it took to turn the initial idea into a completed film.
• Seven years: roughly how long ago Iñárritu first pitched the project to Cruise.
• Six months: the reported UK shoot, creating a direct production link for British audiences and the local film industry.

What This Means

Digger appears to test whether Cruise can turn his screen persona inside out. Rather than playing a controlled action specialist, he portrays a vain executive whose confidence survives even as his decisions threaten everyone around him. That contrast is the main reason the trailer has drawn attention beyond its prosthetic makeover.

For UK cinemagoers, the film also carries a practical local connection: it was filmed in Britain, and post-production continued in London. The use of VistaVision, a large-format film process first introduced in the 1950s, suggests the filmmakers want the satire to feel visually expansive rather than confined to a conventional character comedy.

What to Expect

Digger is scheduled to open in cinemas on 2 October. Promotion is expected to focus on Cruise's physical transformation, the film's black-comic treatment of environmental disaster and the collaboration between Cruise and Iñárritu. The trailer also indicates that Rockwell's attempt to manage the crisis — and the story told about it — will drive the plot.