Warner Bros.
Tom Cruise stars in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger as "the most powerful man in the world"
The first trailer for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, which stars Tom Cruise in the lead role, has been released. Digger has largely been seen by industry insiders as Cruise’s first real shot at winning an Academy Award (for acting) since his last nomination in 1999.
In Digger, Tom Cruise stars as Digger Rockwell, described in the early logline for the film as “the most powerful man in the world” — a wealthy Texan oil tycoon who unleashes a global ecological disaster and then begins a mission to prove he can be humanity’s savior.
Early reports have compared the vibe of the film to Stanley Kubrick’s iconic political satire black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The first trailer for Tom Cruise’s upcoming movie Digger from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu has been released
Iñárritu has also directed films such as Babel, Birdman, and The Revenant — the latter of which famously saw Leonardo DiCaprio win his first Academy Award for Best Actor. Iñárritu also won Best Director for both Birdman and The Revenant.
Check out the first official trailer for Digger, which will be released in movie theaters on October 2, below.
Digger also stars Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wilde, Emma D’Arcy, Burn Gorman, Robert John Burke, Michael Stuhlbarg, and John Goodman.
What’s interesting about the early marketing campaign for Digger is that it, in itself, seems to be an award season play for Cruise, as the first teaser that was released was called “DIGGER – Tom Cruise Retrospective Trailer” and was a three-minute highlight reel of Cruise’s five decades in Hollywood.
As far as Cruise’s Oscar contention is concerned, he hasn’t been nominated since 1999, when he was tapped for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.
Since the year 2000, the only movies he’s starred in without any action in them are Vanilla Sky, Lions for Lambs (literally the first time I’ve ever heard of this movie), Tropic Thunder (it has action but he’s involved in none of it, plus it’s always fun to mention that movie), Valkyrie, and Rock of Ages. That’s it.
So, while Cruise has elevated action filmmaking and lead actor stunt performance to an art form, he hasn’t starred in a drama that truly centers on his acting chops arguably since 2008’s Valkyrie, and hasn’t starred in a non-action movie from an Academy Award-winning director since Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky in 2001.