Digger (2026)
About
An ageing oil baron's reckless drilling triggers a climate catastrophe, in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's satire starring Tom Cruise.
Digger Rockwell runs Rockwell United, an oil company with a friend in the White House. With the backing of the ailing President Compson, he pushes ahead with drilling in Alaska and Greenland, ignoring repeated warnings that the Greenland field sits on top of trapped methane. When a pocket of gas blows, it breaks a vast ice shelf loose and sets it drifting towards Norway, with tidal waves across the North Sea only days away. Instead of warning the public, Digger and the President agree to keep quiet and hope the ice melts before it lands.
Partway through, the film reveals its trick: everything so far has been a dress rehearsal of a stage satire called Fossil Fools, with the actor Curtis Markson playing Digger. Between scenes, Curtis learns that a plane carrying his daughter has gone missing in a storm, and the line between the play's invented disaster and the real world outside the theatre starts to blur. Cruise plays both Digger and Curtis.
Details
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Writer/Screenplay: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., Nicolás Giacobone (screenplay); story by Sabina Berman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Jez Butterworth
Producer: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mary Parent, Tom Cruise, Michael Sharp
Running time: 129 minutes
Certificate: 15 (UK)
Budget: $125–180 million
Box office: $42.1 million worldwide (as of October 21, 2026)
Genre: Black comedy, Satire
Released: October 2, 2026 (UK and US)
Music Composer: Cosmo Sheldrake
Cast
- Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell / Curtis Markson
- Riz Ahmed as Dr. Nirav Ganesh
- John Goodman as President Compson
- Sandra Hüller as Emma Rockwell
- Michael Stuhlbarg as Vice President Eddie
- Jesse Plemons as Kenny Rockwell
- Robert John Burke as Fitzgerald
- Emma D'Arcy as Lina
- Burn Gorman as Amos
- Sophie Wilde as Hannah
- Pip Torrens as Schumer
- Danny Kirrane as Sandy Clarkson
- Corey Johnson as Admiral Jacobs
- Annabel Mullion as Agatha
Related
Trivia
- Iñárritu first had the idea after making The Revenant (2015), and has said it took him around ten years to find the right way to tell it.
- The project was once set up at Netflix under the title Blah, Blah, Blah, with Leonardo DiCaprio in talks to star, before it was dropped for being too close to Don't Look Up.
- Cruise and Iñárritu first discussed the film in 2019, while Cruise was making Top Gun: Maverick.
- Cruise's ten-minute monologue went through around 70 drafts, and Iñárritu has called it the "spine" of the film.
- It was shot on 35 mm film in the VistaVision format by Emmanuel Lubezki, at Pinewood Studios.
- It was the last film Warner Bros. released before the studio became part of Paramount Skydance on October 6, 2026.
Critical Reception
Digger split critics almost exactly down the middle. On Rotten Tomatoes 53% of 334 reviews are positive, and Metacritic gives it 46 out of 100, which it classes as "mixed or average". Supporters praised the scale of the ambition and Cruise's willingness to step away from action roles, while detractors found the satire heavy-handed and the play-within-a-film structure self-satisfied. Opening-night audiences gave it a C+ CinemaScore. IMDb users have been kinder, with an average of 7.5 out of 10 from more than 41,000 ratings.
Reviews
- The New York Times (Manohla Dargis): negative, calling it ponderous despite Cruise's energy.
- The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw): 2 out of 5 stars.
- RogerEbert.com (Robert Daniels): 2 out of 4 stars.
- Vulture (Bilge Ebiri): negative.
Links
Production
Tom Cruise was officially cast in February 2024, as part of his partnership with Warner Bros., with Legendary Pictures producing. Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and Sophie Wilde joined that August, followed by Riz Ahmed, and Emma D'Arcy, Robert John Burke and Burn Gorman early in 2025.
Filming began at Pinewood Studios in the UK on November 7, 2024 and ran into the spring of 2025. Production paused for two days in March 2025 while John Goodman had hip surgery. Cruise's prosthetics for Digger originally took six hours to apply, and he timed each stage of the process himself to get it down to something workable on the shooting schedule.
Release
The film had a Royal Film Performance at Leicester Square in London on September 22, 2026. It opened internationally from September 30, in Mexico on October 1, and in the UK and US on October 2. It played in IMAX, Dolby Cinema and VistaVision presentations, and its IMAX run ended the 70 mm IMAX engagement of The Odyssey (2026).
Box Office
Digger opened to $8 million in the US and Canada, finishing fifth, and dropped 60% to $3.2 million in its second weekend. As of October 21, 2026 it had taken $17.6 million domestically and $24.5 million elsewhere, $42.1 million worldwide, against a production budget reported at between $125 million and $180 million. Variety estimated it would need around $350 million to break even, while Warner Bros. put the figure at $300 million.
