While Tom Cruise has spent most of the last few decades sprinting across the screen and hanging off planes without breaking a sweat, the 63-year-old actor is looking to return to more serious roles now that the Mission Impossible franchise has concluded. And to prove just how serious he is, Cruise will play a balding Texas oil tycoon with a beer gut and a bad comb-over in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, a satirical black comedy film. His new look is closer to Les Grossman after a three-day bourbon binge and a board meeting gone horribly wrong.
We know just how much Oscar judges love transformations. There’s an unspoken formula in Hollywood: take a handsome or beautiful actor and make them completely unrecognizable with makeup and prosthetics. It almost guarantees victory, or at least a nomination for the effort. Just look at Charlize Theron and Monster, Gary Oldman and Darkest Hour, Brendan Fraser and The Whale, Christian Bale and Vice. And that’s not even half the list.
The first images of Digger have finally arrived online (from a 3-minute teaser that’s already circulating online before its official release), and they reveal Cruise as Digger Rockwell in all his sweaty Southern glory. With his thin white hair and a puffy face, he’s almost impossible to recognize.
At one point in the teaser (which only has about 20 seconds of actual footage from the new film, as the rest is actually a montage of other Tom Cruise movies), he appears completely rattled after hearing about a Greenland ice sheet leak that threatens to spiral into worldwide catastrophe. The Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” plays in the background.
The film follows Rockwell, described as the most powerful CEO on Earth, after his drilling operation triggers an environmental disaster that could eventually push the world toward nuclear war. John Goodman plays an ailing U.S. President demanding Digger clean up the mess before millions die.
Jesse Plemons actually describes the script as one of the “strangest, funniest, most tragic” things he’s ever read, comparing it to Dr. Strangelove.
Iñárritu has apparently been developing the movie for close to a decade now, with Cruise attached for seven years already. At CinemaCon 2026, Cruise told audiences, “It took 40 years for me to be able to put on the boots of Digger Rockwell and to reveal the many layers of the character.”
Iñárritu actually sounds just as stunned by Cruise’s transformation in Digger as audiences are. “Watching Tom Cruise become Digger Rockwell, I was not prepared for that,” the director said. “Embodying this character is another kind of fearless… this role could be his most challenging high-wire act.”
With everything happening in the world today, we probably need political satires with important messages like this to make the right waves in the industry. And it probably helps that Emmanuel Lubezki will handle all the beautiful cinematography.
Tom Cruise has always received praise from filmmakers over the years, with many believing that he’s one of the greats. Digger is a chance to silence haters. And based on what we’ve already seen, he’s going for gold.
Either way, nobody’s going to mistake him for Ethan Hunt here.
