[image]
[title]Tom Cruise stars in DIGGER as the most powerful man in the world, a character who causes a disaster and then embarks on a mission to prove that he is humanity’s savior. The new original film from Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu combines humor, drama, satire and spectacle in a story that seeks to reflect a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from fiction.
In an exclusive conference, Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu discussed the origins of the story, the creation of a protagonist the actor had never played before, and the particular tone of DIGGER. They also talked about what it was like to work together and what they hope audiences will take away after seeing the film, which will hit cinemas worldwide on September 30, 2026.
The character Tom Cruise had never played before
For Tom Cruise, one of the first things that caught his attention was precisely how unexpected the project was. The actor explains that when a director or screenwriter presents him with a story, the first thing he wants to know is what they are thinking about it. When Alejandro approached him to share his vision, he felt from the first reading that he was looking at something completely different from anything he had done before.
You might also like: 18 movie releases coming in October: from Wanda Nara to Tom Cruise
“I had never read a character like this, let alone had the privilege of playing someone like him on screen,” he shared. “Being able to create a character like that was truly incredible.” To build Digger, Cruise also worked on different aspects of the character, from his voice to the way he conveyed his different nuances. “You have to find an accent that allows me to convey the humor, the drama and the rhythm, so that it’s interesting and fun to play,” he explained. The actor said the process allowed him to test his skills, develop new tools and take his work a step further. “You have to find a voice,” he summed up.
“I had never read a character like this, let alone had the privilege of playing someone like him on screen,” Tom Cruise
One of the film’s most iconic moments is Tom Cruise’s monologue, which lasts ten minutes. Iñárritu praised the actor’s command of language, intonation and physicality. “He says wordsmith: it’s like a blacksmith of words, an orator. It’s about knowing the position of the language, the intonation, his text, the movement, what he does with his hands, what he does with his feet,” he explained.
The director also highlighted the camera work, developed alongside Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, the three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer, and Cruise over several months. “Look at that scene, that dance. What he does with the camera, which Chivo and I developed together with him over many months. But the way he does it to make it natural and to master the words, the eye, that little eye movement... all that mastery,” he said.
Iñárritu compared Cruise’s work to that of a stunt performer, where “every second counts,” and highlighted the precision with which the actor controls his body and emotions. “In the same way, he controls his body and his emotions,” he explained. For the director, working with Cruise on that scene was “an extraordinary gift” and the result of a process that required a great deal of work. “Many times, you have to work very hard to achieve something. Things don’t necessarily happen perfectly. This scene was like that, like a gift that we earned through a lot of hard work,” he said. And he concluded: “Miracles work with those who work. It wasn’t the miracle of the gods; we earned it.”
You might also like: Exclusive: Julia Roberts and Luca Guadagnino reveal the secrets behind Hunting Witches
The origins of DIGGER: when reality surpasses fiction
Iñárritu explains that, toward the end of filming The Revenant, he experienced firsthand how a single degree of difference could completely transform a location: where they expected to find snow, there was water. To explain the scale of that change, he compared it to body temperature, noting that a 1.5-degree difference in temperature can be equivalent to having a fever.
Following that experience, the director began working with Sabina Berman on the idea for the film. Together, they observed what was happening in the Arctic, the melting of the polar ice caps and the conversations and negotiations involving oil companies that were celebrating the possibility of opening new channels to extract more oil and increase trade.
“And I thought: ‘How crazy.’ To see this being considered a business opportunity and to see that narrative beginning to take hold, without looking at reality, but only from an economic-interest perspective,” Iñárritu said. From there came the idea of creating a character capable of interpreting those signs and confronting a reality he preferred to deny. “I was beginning to find signs of reality, giving him clues so that he could act and begin to deny or fight with that reality,” he explained. That search became one of the seeds of DIGGER.
A film that became increasingly close to reality
For Iñárritu, the film’s tone emerged from observing the world around him. “You only have to watch television,” he said. DIGGER combines serious situations with absurdity, satire and spectacle to reflect a present that is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from fiction.
As they developed the screenplay, reality began to surpass even what they had imagined. “No matter how much we stretched our imagination, reality was moving faster,” Alejandro explained. The director came to feel that they were making “a documentary of the future” and decided to approach the story as an observation of humanity, rather than as a specific political commentary.
“No matter how much we stretched our imagination, reality was moving faster,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu
“I think I’m happy that, together with my collaborators, we were able to find a way to see ourselves and recognize ourselves there, without it being accusatory. I think it’s a reflection that goes beyond accusation, but rather asks us where we are heading with these stories that we are not all telling,” he said.
At the end of the conference, Cruise spoke about what he hopes will happen when the film reaches theaters. For him, one of cinema’s great virtues is the possibility for each viewer to create their own experience in front of a story.
“I want the audience to have their own experience. They’re going to leave the theater with their own point of view and with whatever each person wants to take away. That’s the beauty of cinema. Coming into a theater together, being there together. I think that’s what I love,” he said. He also highlighted cinema as a space for connection and conversation: “I love cinema that allows us to have these conversations, to meet, to come together, to come from all walks of life. That’s what I wanted,” he concluded at the end of the conference.
In that intersection of satire, spectacle and reality, DIGGER offers an unsettling yet deeply human perspective on the world around us. Perhaps that is one of the keys to the story: leaving the theater with questions of your own and wanting to talk about what you have just seen.
Tom Cruise’s performance is one of the film’s driving forces: he combines humor, physical energy and precision to create a character who is as eccentric as he is unpredictable. At the same time, Iñárritu’s vision gives the film a distinctive identity, moving between absurdity and reflection without losing sight of the human side of its characters.
You might also like: Exclusive interview with Rossif Sutherland: From Donald’s legacy to a murder in a small town
DIGGER
- Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
- Screenplay: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman
- Story: Sabina Berman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Jez Butterworth
- Starring: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- International release: September 30, 2026
- In theaters: Cinemas and IMAX
- Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
- Production: Legendary Pictures
- Format: VistaVision
