Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s upcoming tentpole for Warner Bros and Legendary starring Tom Cruise is called Digger and will open on October 2, 2026 – fuelling speculation that the film will premiere at a fall festival.
On Thursday morning Warner Bros dropped a poster on Instagram with the tagline “A Comedy of Catastrophic Proportions”. The teaser trailer was accompanied by a tortured guitar riff and began with a silhouette of a dishevelled Cruise swirling balletically with a shovel in a dimly-lit apartment, before he scales a railing by the sea and cavorts along the top bar.
The opening date is prime territory for a Venice Film Festival (September 2-12, 2026) berth and indeed the Lido has been a happy place for the Oscar-winning Mexican auteur Iñárritu. Two of his three last films – Bardo in 2022 and Birdman in 2014 – premiered there, as did 21 Grams in 2003. He won back-to-back directing Oscars in 2015 and 2016 for Birdman and The Revenant
Digger shot in the UK and marks Iñárritu’s return to English-language filmmaking after The Revenant in 2015. The feature previously went by the working title Judy and bore the logline: “The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.”
The cast includes Oscar-nominated Anatomy Of A Fall star Sandra Hüller and Jesse Plemons, who is in awards contention this season with Bugonia. Iñárritu appears to be flexing his absurdist muscles again as he did on Birdman and Bardo, and co-wrote Digger with Mexican playwright Sabina Berman and his Birdman collaborators Nicolas Giacobone and Alexander Dinelaris.
Cruise was last seen in 2025 summer tentpole Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and has demonstrated superior acting chops in arthouse films like Magnolia and a penchant for comedy (and dancing) as seen in his notorious cameo as Len Grossman in Tropic Thunder.
This is the first film to emerge from Cruise’s strategic pact with Warner Bros announced nearly two years ago. In the past, he has made films with the studio like their most recent collaboration Edge Of Tomorrow in 2014 as well as The Last Samurai, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Interview With The Vampire, and Risky Business.
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