What Do We Know About Digger, Tom Cruise's Big Collaboration With Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Published Jun 30, 2026, 11:00 PM EDT

While some lucky viewers got to see snippets of Digger at CinemaCon, most audiences have only gotten brief tastes of the film through teasers and Tom Cruise retrospectives. Although there are still some very big question marks about the plot, characters, and themes, some clues in these teasers hint at the general tone and narrative. Here's what we know so far about Digger.

Digger Is Set To Be Tom Cruise's Biggest Satire Ever

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu made a name for himself with many of his more grounded dramas, including 21 Grams and Babel. It was the one-two punch of Birdman in 2014 and The Revenant in 2015 that cemented his place in the cinematic landscape. That's one of the reasons his upcoming film, Digger, is such an exciting prospect.

It will be his first English-language film since The Revenant, with a visual aesthetic and tenor teased in trailers that feels like a middle ground between his work in Birdman and the satirical vibes of Armando Iannucci. Digger is part of the auteur-driven film slate that Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy lobbied for at Warner Bros., which has resulted in acclaimed hits like Sinners and One Battle After Another.

Coupled with the filmmaker's idiosyncratic touches and the clout that comes with Tom Cruise being attached, it's clear that Digger will be very much driven by their creative impulses instead of any studio ambitions. Cruise and Iñárritu have assembled a truly stacked cast around them, although many of the roles still remain unconfirmed.

While the actor is best known for his action movies and dramatic leading roles, Cruise has always had a good ear for comedy — from his charming turn in Risky Business as a young man to his scene-stealing turn as movie executive Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, the actor does terrific work when he's allowed to cut loose for the right role.

At the time of writing, Digger's story remains unknown. However, between the official description of the film, reports of the trailer that screened at CinemaCon, and what audiences have seen for themselves in the form of brief teasers, there's at least a good idea of what the film will be gradually about.

What Is Tom Cruise's Digger About?

Described as a "comedy of catastrophic proportions" in the marketing material that's been released so far, Digger seems to be positioning itself as a social satire in the vein of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The film's log-line teases that the film will focus on the world's most powerful man, seemingly the titular Digger.

Coupled with the footage included in the Tom Cruise retrospective released by Warner Bros. (that also serves as a sly tease for the film), Cruise plays the lead role, a confident southern businessman who has to prove he can save humanity from a crisis of his own creation. The tease features shots of the man seemingly identified as Digger approaching a furious political caucus.

Later in the teaser, that group is shown to crumble into outright chaos. The teaser does hint at some genuinely massive stakes, with stealth bombers in flight and fires in the distance. Throughout it all, the only hint of the tone of the film is really given by Cruise himself, who briefly appears as a cowboy-themed businessman who compares telling the truth to hitting someone with a pistol.

The trailer for the film was shown at CinemaCon, with Deadline reporting that the teaser also features Digger complaining to a scientist about a "five-foot-crack" that could disrupt a billion-dollar initiative. This sets up some sort of "worst-case scenario," according to the President of the United States, who is played in the film by John Goodman.

This all suggests that the film is following a similar thematic track as Don't Look Up!, using social satire to highlight the ecological dangers that short-sighted and profit-driven humanity can cause for itself. It all seems to be setting up Digger to be one of the most thematically rich and satirically silly entries in Tom Cruise's filmography and has quickly become one of the most anticipated films of the year.