Tom Cruise's 'Digger': Why Iñárritu May Be Casting the Man, Not the Actor

Tom Cruise's new movie is not just starring Tom Cruise. I think the director is quietly building the whole thing around Cruise's public persona, and once you notice it, you cannot unsee it.

The film is called Digger, and the director is Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man who made Birdman. That single fact reframes everything, because Inarritu has done this exact move before. By the time you finish reading, I think you will agree this is Cruise's most fascinating non-franchise project in years.

What is Tom Cruise's movie Digger about?

Digger is a Warner Brothers film in which Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, billed as a comedy of catastrophic proportions. He is the most powerful man in the world, racing to prove he is humanity's savior before a disaster he personally unleashed wipes everything out. The first teaser back in December already made it clear this is a role unlike anything we associate with Cruise.

Then last week the second teaser dropped, and it broke the rules. More than half of it is a career retrospective: four decades of Cruise being one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and only after all that do we get a brief look at actual Digger footage.

Normally I would call that bad marketing, a desperation play from a studio leaning on star power because the movie itself is a hard sell. But I do not think that is what is happening here.

The trailer is doing two things on purpose

My read is that the trailer is engineered for contrast and context.

Contrast, because Digger Rockwell is obviously nothing like the Cruise we know. Context, because his undeniable career is what makes him uniquely qualified to play this specific man. The official Warner Brothers description says it plainly: "We've never trusted a man more. Tom Cruise is Digger." And at CinemaCon in April, Cruise told theater owners it took four decades of acting to reach the point where he could play Digger Rockwell.

Four decades just to be qualified for one role. Put that alongside a trailer that spends most of its runtime on his legacy, and this stops feeling like an accident.

The Birdman playbook, applied to Cruise

Here is why Inarritu matters so much. In Birdman, he cast Michael Keaton as a washed-up actor famous for playing a superhero. That landed because Keaton actually played Batman, twice. The film is fiction, but Keaton's real baggage bleeds into it. You are not just watching a character haunted by his superhero past, you are watching the real Michael Keaton play one. Inarritu has said as much: Keaton brought reality to the film because he was one of the few people who had genuinely worn the cape.

So the obvious question is whether he is running the same experiment on Tom Cruise. I think the answer is yes.

Over the last several years, Cruise has become a walking symbol of Hollywood and theatrical moviegoing, credited with pulling audiences back into theaters with Mission: Impossible and Top Gun. When he accepted his honorary Oscar, he said making films is not what he does, it is who he is. Now take that man and cast him as a powerful figure with a savior complex. That is not a coincidence. When a director turns a star's entire self-image back on him, that is the whole point of the movie. That is why Digger has quietly become one of the most interesting films of the year to me.

Weekend box office: Toy Story 5 holds, Supergirl stumbles

Film	Weekend	Notes
Toy Story 5	~$70M	Week 2, nearing $300M domestic in about 10 days
Supergirl	~$40M	DCU opening, ~$170M budget
Obsession	~$9M	Week 7, ~$230M domestic
Jackass: Best in Last	$8M to $9M	~$10M budget

Toy Story 5 held number one in its second weekend with roughly $70 million. Yes, that is a steep percentage drop from its enormous opening, but Pixar is still sitting on top of the summer with the fifth entry in a franchise pushing toward $300 million domestic in about ten days. I spent a while doubting Pixar sequels, and this one keeps proving me wrong.

My real concern is Supergirl, and I say that as someone who wanted it to work. Around $40 million is not a disaster in isolation, but this movie does not exist in isolation. It is the second theatrical film in the new DCU, following Superman, and it needed to carry that momentum forward. The word of mouth I have heard is not great, and against a budget near $170 million the math gets ugly fast. This is a genuine warning sign for DC.

The biggest surprise, again, is Obsession. It is in week seven and still pulled in roughly $9 million, sitting around $230 million domestic and well over $300 million worldwide. Calling it a surprise barely fits anymore. This is one of the defining box office stories of the year, part of the same online-native horror wave that Backrooms rode.

The sleeper is Jackass: Best in Last at $8 to $9 million on a modest $10 million budget. It will clear its costs easily. More proof that not every release needs to be a monster blockbuster when you know your audience and keep the budget in check.

One last note: Michael finally dropped out of the top ten. It just passed Oppenheimer as the highest-grossing biopic of all time, not just musical biopic, the whole category. Catch it before it leaves theaters.

Ratatouille 2, AI money, and immersive domes

Brad Bird reportedly turned down Ratatouille 2, and honestly, good for him. Pixar has floated the idea over the years, half-hoping he would come back and cook, and his answer was essentially that the story is already told. Ratatouille works because it feels complete. I am not sitting around wondering what happens next in the Remy universe, and I respect a filmmaker who protects that.

On the industry side, Google DeepMind is putting $75 million into A24 to develop filmmaking tools. A24 built its brand on originality and trusting filmmakers, so pairing it with an AI push naturally raises questions. AI that speeds up redundant pre-production work is one conversation. AI that starts quietly shaping creative decisions is a very different one, and Hollywood keeps insisting it only means the first. I am not convinced, and I am a little concerned.

Meanwhile Sony invested $100 million into Cosm, one of those immersive dome companies with a wraparound screen (there is a location here in Dallas). Beyond sports and concerts, the pitch includes premium movie screenings. What I like is what it signals: Sony is not only thinking about the next movie, it is thinking about the experience and how to make leaving the house feel worthwhile again. I may go check one out myself.

And a fun what-if: Adam McKay once had an idea for a Talladega Nights sequel where Ricky Bobby heads to Europe and gets tangled up in Formula 1. The racing logistics killed it and McKay and Will Ferrell made Step Brothers instead, so I cannot complain, but Ricky Bobby and F1, Shake and Bake across Europe? I would have been there opening night.

Coming soon: a lighter July 4th weekend

The holiday frame is quieter than recent weeks. The headline is the family-friendly Minions and Monsters, technically opening July 1st, the latest Despicable Me entry, this time dropping the Minions into 1920s Hollywood where they accidentally unleash monsters. The trailers have not fully sold me, but these movies tend to be charming, and it will be worth watching how it plays with Toy Story 5 still humming.

My wild card is Young Washington, an Angel Studios historical drama about George Washington during the French and Indian War, starring Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis, Kelsey Grammer and Mary Louise Parker. Smart July 4th timing and strong counterprogramming against all the animation and superheroes.

The smaller one I am curious about is Lock Box, a limited horror release from Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism), adapted from a cult horror podcast. I doubt it will be huge, but with online-native horror having such a moment this summer, it is the under-the-radar pick for genre fans.

All of it circles back to the same question Digger keeps poking at: what actually gets people off the couch and into a theater? Star power, spectacle, a story only one specific human could tell. Cruise has spent forty years being the answer. It would be fitting if Inarritu made a movie about exactly that.