‘Digger’ Trailer: Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu Unite for a VistaVision Comedy Epic

When Tom Cruise got an early look at “Amores Perros” before it premiered at Cannes in 2000, he knew he wanted to work with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

It took 26 years, but now Cruise and Iñárritu have finally joined forces for “Digger,” a film that finds Cruise back in “Magnolia” and “Eyes Wide Shut” mode, giving his all for a bold auteurist vision. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a crass and charismatic oil executive who’s called upon to help save the world after his company nearly destroys it. With gray hair, a paunch, and a Southern accent slightly less heightened than Foghorn Leghorn’s, Cruise is about as far from “Mission: Impossible” hero Ethan Hunt here as one can imagine.

Cruise gave a few dozen members of the press a sneak peek at “Digger” on Thursday at the Steven J. Ross Theatre on the Warner Bros. lot, where he extolled the virtues of Iñárritu’s daring style and celebrated the director’s decision to shoot “Digger” on VistaVision.

VistaVision, a 35mm format that offers increased detail and texture by running the film through the camera horizontally rather than vertically and capturing roughly double the resolution, was more or less abandoned in the 1960s in favor of less expensive (and inferior) widescreen processes, but it has seen a resurgence in recent years thanks to its embrace by directors like Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (“One Battle After Another”).

For Cruise, shooting on VistaVision recalled his experience making Ron Howard’s “Far and Away,” which in 1992 was the first movie shot on 70mm in 10 years.

If the trailer and Iñárritu’s own track record are any indication, “Digger” will take full advantage of VistaVision’s epic potential; while story details are kept to a minimum in the trailer, it’s crammed with the kind of awe-inspiring imagery one would expect from the filmmaker behind “Birdman,” “The Revenant,” and “Bardo.” IndieWire’s Brian Welk called the footage he saw from “Digger” the best thing he saw the day it premiered at CinemaCon, and the trailer sets expectations even higher.

Can the movie live up to or exceed those expectations? Will Tom Cruise finally get the Oscar he should have won for playing T.J. Mackey in “Magnolia?” We’ll find out when Warner Bros. releases “Digger” in theaters on October 2, 2026.

Watch the official trailer below.