Warner Bros. has released the final trailer for Digger, the Tom Cruise-led political satire from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, as the film continues toward its October 2 theatrical release.
🎬 Watch the Trailer
The movie casts Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an oil baron whose latest crisis is one of his own making: he is tasked with saving the day after causing an environmental catastrophe. The footage puts more focus on Cruise’s heavily transformed character, a blunt, Southern-talking, older, potbellied power player who may be the only person able to respond to what appears to be a rapidly escalating ecological disaster.
Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons also star. Goodman appears as the standing U.S. President, who orders Digger to step in and fix the crisis.
The final trailer follows the first trailer, which Warner Bros. released July 13. That earlier footage had previously been shown to exhibitors at CinemaCon in April.
Cruise’s transformation into Digger Rockwell
Iñárritu, described in the source material as a four-time Oscar winner, has framed Digger as a project with a long gestation. Speaking at a Warner Bros. event, he said he began conceiving the film “just after The Revenant,” when he had “an idea, not script, not a film, just a relentless recurring obsession, that has endured through all these wild years.” He added: “I knew who this character was.”
The director also said Cruise was essential to the role. “The film needed Tom. We wanted to work together since the beginning of the century,” Iñárritu said. “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 said Cruise’s work on the character was a major physical and creative overhaul. “The transformation he went through was astonishing,” the filmmaker said, adding that Cruise told him, “It took me 40 years to become this character.”
Cruise, who attended the Warner Bros. event, said he had long been a fan of Iñárritu’s 2000 film Amores Perros. Recalling the filmmaker’s pitch for Digger Rockwell, Cruise said: “Alejandro, he shows me, he’s like, ‘I want you to look like this.’ And it wasn’t like he said, ‘This is the kind of character.’ So, I’m thinking, ‘This guy’s got f*cking balls,’ and I’m like, ‘I can’t wait. Let’s go.’”
The actor also connected the role to his broader approach to character building, naming Les Grossman, Interview With the Vampire, Collateral and Risky Business while discussing how performance details come together. “I’m always asking, ‘How do I communicate this?’” Cruise said. “The physicality, the makeup, that is stuff that you find as you are learning how to communicate.”
He continued by emphasizing that the choices behind Digger were highly specific. “You really have to understand the tools — it’s not one size fits all,” Cruise said. “You have to find the communication, the lenses, the color of the makeup. The level of detail of making a film like this is… Color of the cowboy boots. What are my shorts like? The sets, the color of the sets. They’re beautiful on every single level, and it’s all very… You look at the taste of this man. It’s very special.”
A large-format reunion behind the camera
Digger was shot in VistaVision using a camera designed in 1954. For the film, Iñárritu reteamed with Emmanuel Lubezki, his Oscar-winning cinematographer from The Revenant.
Cruise said the finished film reflects a level of precision that stands apart for both him and Iñárritu. “I think when you see Digger, just the level of detail, the skill, the layers of making this film… He’s never made something like this before, nor have I,” Cruise said.
Iñárritu also offered a characteristically pointed tease in a video introduction reel at Warner Bros., telling the audience: “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself, because Mother Nature loves motherf*ckers.”
What happens next?
With the final trailer now out, Warner Bros. is moving Digger into the last stretch before release. The film opens in theaters on October 2.