Cinephiles eyes popped at the February 2024 news that Tom Cruise would team up with Alejandro G. Iñárritu for a black comedy. Cruise, who has been exclusively an action movie aficionado for the past two decades, is making a comedy? It’s not like it’s never happened, but after so many “Mission: Impossible” sequels and other blockbuster films, one couldn’t imagine a harder career pivot for the movie star than that.
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But rest assured, the Cruise-Iñárritu team-up is real, and while the fim’s October 2, 2026 release date remains far away, it now has an official title, with a new teaser to accompany the news. Behold “Digger,” deemed “a comedy of catastrophic proportion,” with a full name for Cruise’s title character, too: Digger Rockwell.
Now, what’s Digger Rockwell’s story? Warner Bros. won’t reveal that yet, but the teaser shows Cruise in shadowed silhouette, donning cowboy boots and a preposterously large prosthetic nose, and dancing with a shovel both in a dusty dilapidated room and on an LA boardwalk. Make of this what you will, but that’s enough to indicate what this film’s tone will be: off-kilter, sardonic, with Cruise’s character possibly in the same wheelhouse as his infamous “Tropic Thunder” cameo, Les Grossman. In any case, “Digger” sure looks like the surprising “new kind of thing” Iñárritu has promised in interviews about the film.
Here’s what else we know about “Digger” right now. The film also stars Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde, and Riz Ahmed. Emma D’Arcy, Robert John Burke, Burn Gorman, and Pip Torrens round out the main cast. Also, Iñárritu co-writes the black comedy with Sabina Berman, Alexander Delinaris Jr., and Nicolás Giacobone. Legendary Pictures produces, with TC Productions and M Productions, with Warner Bros. distributing the film worldwide.
Does this new teaser catapult “Digger” past other 2026 films as one of the most anticipated movies of next year? It arguably already was (we have Iñárritu’s film ranked at #3 on our list of anticipated 2026 films), but this first look makes good on the director’s promise of a wild, wild film. The biggest question now becomes: how wild are we talking? The next trailer for “Digger,” whenever it arrives, may provide an answer, but it’s apparent that the movie will be as big a swing as Iñárritu and Cruise already promised.
Take a look the poster and title announcement teaser for “Digger” below.
![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://theplaylist.net/digger-teaser-alejandro-g-inarritus-upcoming-black-comedy-starring-tom-cruise-official-title-20251218/&media=https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/18111644/Alejandro-G.-Inarritus-upcoming-movie-with-Tom-Cruise-is-called-DIGGER.jpg&description=Cruise plays Digger Rockwell in Iñárritu's latest, deemed "a comedy of catastrophic proportions" on the movie's new poster.){kind=link}