Tom Cruise’s Digger Lets the Oil Tycoon Steal the Film

Tom Cruise’s oil tycoon is already winning Digger’s early screenings, even as Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s climate satire heads for a soft October 2 opening. The film had its London premiere on September 22, 2026. Wide release in the United States and Britain follows on October 2, with international dates from September 30.

Iñárritu spent 10 years on a man who talks the world into his version of events. That is the part first viewers keep quoting, and it is a poor fit for a lecture.

Digger’s Best Scene Keeps Defending Oil

Critic Kyle Smith watched Digger Rockwell defend oil while the room piled on him, then named that speech the film’s best passage and handed it his “Col. Jessep award.” The line stuck because it is a performance beat, not a pamphlet. Cruise, as a producer as well as the lead, is playing a wealthy oil man whose company helps set off the mess he then tries to fix.

Digger’s speech defending oil while everyone hates on him is lowkey the best part of DIGGER and he gets the Col. Jessep award from me

Kyle Smith, critic, on X, September 23, 2026

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich went the other way on the comedy, writing that watching Iñárritu construct a joke is like watching Frank Gehry draw a straight line. Jonathan Sim called the picture a warning about climate change and the people in power who will not stop it, then said the stakes still feel lower than they should. Those three reads can sit in the same movie. The sermon is on the marquee. The tycoon is what people repeat.

That split is already doing commercial damage. A climate message is easy to sell to a certain awards voter and hard to sell to a Friday night. A charismatic oil baron who refuses to shut up is the opposite problem. He is watchable, and he muddies the moral. Iñárritu described the film as a wild comedy of catastrophic proportions, not a briefing. Early word is treating it as both, and believing neither fully.

Iñárritu Spent 10 Years on This Seducer

The director has said he came up with Digger after finishing The Revenant in 2015, then lived with the man rather than a plot. He knew how the character spoke, how he survived, and how he seduced reality into agreeing with him. He has also said he was not hunting for a story. He was hunting for the right way to say it, and it took 10 years.

He began talking to Cruise in 2019, while the star was shooting Top Gun: Maverick. Cruise had been a fan since Amores perros. Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures announced the film in February 2024, after Cruise’s studio pact. On the official site, the logline is still a humanity’s savior before the disaster he unleashed. John Goodman plays Compson, a dictatorial U.S. president. Sandra Hüller plays Emma Rockwell, the tycoon’s half-sister and partner. Riz Ahmed is Ganesh, a scientist at the president’s side.

At CinemaCon on April 14, 2026, Iñárritu told theater owners the film is about the delusional need to control things even when failure is obvious, and about a powerful man who did not change the world but changed how people see it. He called Cruise’s turn another kind of fearless, apart from the planes and jumps. Cruise said this is the kind of movie that made him want to make movies, and that it took 40 years to put on Rockwell’s boots. Jesse Plemons, who plays Kenny, likened the script to a modern Dr. Strangelove that then becomes something else.

THE ROAD TO OCTOBER 2

1. 2015-2019: Iñárritu forms the character after The Revenant, then takes the idea to Cruise during Top Gun: Maverick.
2. February 2024: Warner Bros. and Legendary announce Cruise in the lead.
3. November 7, 2024: Principal photography starts at Pinewood Studios on VistaVision 35 mm, with Emmanuel Lubezki on camera. The working title is Judy.
4. May 3, 2025: Production wraps. Iñárritu confirms it is a comedy. Kazu Hiro handles the prosthetics that bury Cruise under gray hair, a comb-over, and a gut.
5. April 14, 2026: Cruise and Iñárritu show footage at CinemaCon. The full trailer follows on July 13.
6. September 22, 2026: Royal premiere in London. The U.S. and U.K. opening is October 2 in IMAX, with some VistaVision shows.

Warner Bros. posted the official trailer in July, selling “Digg. Or Die.” rather than a policy paper.

The Revenant Crew Came Back for a Comedy

On paper this is the same awards machine that finally got Leonardo DiCaprio his competitive Oscar. Iñárritu directs. Lubezki shoots. Mary Parent produces, as she did on The Revenant. Stephen Mirrione cuts. The Birdman writers Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolás Giacobone are back on the script, with Sabina Berman and a story credit for Jez Butterworth. The bloodline is prestige. The tone is not a frozen revenge western.

THREE IÑÁRRITU STAR VEHICLES

DiCaprio’s film could sneak out limited, let the bear footage travel, and grow. Digger does not get that runway. It is 129 minutes, rated R for pervasive language, and booked like a major. Birdman’s writers know how to make a star look ridiculous and magnetic at once. That skill is the bet. It is also why a climate scolding was always a shaky way to market a man Iñárritu built to seduce a room.

A $125 Million Comedy of Catastrophic Proportions

The Numbers lists a production budget of $125 million for the Legendary and TC Productions film. Matthew Belloni had already tied that figure to Warner chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy and their push for director-led originals after Sinners and One Battle After Another. One Battle After Another opened in the $22 million range and still played through awards season. That comparison is the studio’s comfort blanket, and it only works if the reviews eventually gather.

A $125 million original comedy with heavy makeup, VistaVision, and ILM work is a strange object in 2026. Cruise is the commercial insurance. Iñárritu is the artistic insurance. Neither one has lately made a broad farce at this price. Filming paused two days in March 2025 when Goodman needed hip surgery, a reminder that the production was a long British shoot, not a cameo in an action unit. Cosmo Sheldrake, in his first feature score, is not a household awards name. The craft list around him is. That mix is how you get a royal premiere and a nervous tracking grid in the same week.

Opening Tracking Falls After the First Screenings

NRG’s survey tracking debuted near $20 million on September 15, then slipped to $19 million on September 22, Belloni said, even after Cruise’s press run. A Box Office Theory tracker then read first-day presales at one major chain as about 34 percent behind The Drama and 35 percent behind The Bride, and put a realistic target around $10 million if walk-ups do not save it. Those are different tools, not two versions of one number. NRG is a survey. The $10 million read is a presale model. Both point down from a $125 million cost.

THE OPENING WEEKEND READS

• NRG, September 15: About $20 million domestic.
• NRG, September 22: About $19 million, a $1 million slide in a week.
• Presales model: Around $10 million, using The Bride’s $7.8 million open and The Drama’s $14 million range as comps.

Full reviews were still due after those first social posts. First reactions usually skew kind, which is why a mixed-to-poor batch landed harder than a shrug. Trailers had already divided people. The satirical premise is a tough multiplex sell even with Cruise’s name above the title. A soft open does not kill an Oscar nomination by itself. It does make the film look like a specialist object, and specialist objects need critic armor they do not yet have.

Cruise Already Has an Oscar From Iñárritu

The idea that Cruise is groveling for his first gold statue skips a date. On November 16, 2025, at the 16th Governors Awards, the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar. Iñárritu presented it. Cruise, then 63, said making films is not what he does, it is who he is. He has three competitive acting nominations, for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia, plus a Best Picture nomination as a producer of Top Gun: Maverick. He has never won in those races. The honorary award is real, and it is not Best Actor.

Making films is not what I do, it is who I am.

Tom Cruise, Academy Honorary Award speech, 16th Governors Awards, November 16, 2025

So the Digger campaign is not a man with empty hands crashing a climate movie. It is a star who already stood next to this director on an Oscar stage, now asking voters for the competitive prize the honorary was designed not to be. That is a cleaner story than a sellout, and a colder one. If the performance is as large as the friendly notices say, a nomination is still live. A win needs a film voters want to embrace, not merely a speech they quote against the movie’s grain.

After the London bow, Cruise posted from the royal premiere and thanked the Royal Family, the city, and the cast.

Tonight has been an absolute joy and an honor. Thank you to The Royal Family, the city of London, and to all in attendance of our official Royal Premiere of DIGGER! Alejandro, the cast, and I had so much fun.

1/3 pic.twitter.com/bnRd4hAHlW

— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) September 23, 2026

Where the First Reactions Land

Awards journalist Clayton Davis wrote that Digger is not what people expect, that Cruise and Goodman are doing stellar work, that Sophie Wilde might be best in show, and that not all the dots connect. Film journalist Anne Thompson called it a brave, gorgeous art film that will not score with mainstream crowds but could play for the Academy, and flagged a tour-de-force amphitheater scene as the possible nomination clip. Ryan Lattanzio called it a self-indulgent miscalculation from end to end. Liam Crowley called it a masterpiece and his new Best Picture leader. Joey Magidson called it a mess that was not enjoyable, with Cruise still good and Ahmed a highlight.

WHAT THE FIRST SCREENINGS AGREED ON

• The swing: Almost every early notice treats the film as a huge, polarizing bet, not a safe Cruise vehicle.
• The star: Even the pans tend to keep Cruise’s energy in the plus column, which is how nominations survive bad nights.
• The joke: Several voices say the satire does not land as often as the production design, the camera, and the oil-man aria.
• The market: Thompson’s warning that it will not score with mainstream audiences matches the presale math better than Crowley’s Best Picture heat.

Gregory Ellwood called it the most political movie of Cruise’s career and still nomination-worthy. That political tag is the trap. Once a Cruise film is filed under climate, a slice of his audience hears a lecture and stays home, while another slice waits for the villain to get punished and instead gets a seducer who will not leave the frame. Iñárritu already told theater owners who the man was. The tracking is catching up to that description.

Digger still opens October 2 in theaters and IMAX. For 129 minutes the most powerful man in the film will keep trying to talk the disaster into a win. Early viewers have already told you which part they believe.