Tom Cruise is back to saving the world — but this time with a comedic twist — in Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s Digger, as a special look arrived at CinemaCon.
Warner Bros. showed off the project during the studio’s Las Vegas presentation on Tuesday, with Cruise and Iñárritu both in attendance and receiving a massive round of applause upon their arrival.
Cruise, likely the industry’s No. 1 advocate for theaters, told the room of cinema owners and distributors “I want to thank you all for everything you do” and celebrated by adding, “we’re up 23 percent so far” at the box office. “My film family, you know I’m here for you and I love you,” Cruise said.
Iñárritu explained that he first had the idea of Digger nine years ago, and has been talking to Cruise about it for the last seven years. “Watching Tom Cruise becoming Digger Rockwell, I was not prepared for that,” the filmmaker continued, adding that he was fearless from his stunts but “embodying this character, this is another kind of fearless… this role could be his most challenging, hire-wire act.”
Cruise gushed over his collaboration with Iñárritu in return, saying this was “the kind of movie is why I wanted to make movies.” He added, “The movie is wild, it’s funny and I can’t wait for you all to see it.”
In the footage, Cruise as unrecognizable, sporting gray hair, wrinkles and a gut as he struts around his mansion and nurses his sick cat. It’s soon clear that Digger is the billionaire executive of a major company causing an environmental disaster via a methane leak that is threatening to displace millions of people. John Goodman appears as the President, urging Cruise’s character to fix it — and so he sets out to do so by literally grabbing a shovel. “We can’t control the course of nature, at least we can control the narrative,” he declares.
The film, which also stars Sandra Huller, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sophie Wilde and Emma D’Arcy, is being billed as a “Comedy of Catastrophic Proportions.”
“All I can say is it is a brutal, wild comedy of catastrophic proportions. It’s insane. It’s scary and funny and beautiful. I know comedy is not what people expect from me, or Tom, and making this film was terrifying for me,” Iñárritu said while in Cannes last year. “But I don’t like to repeat myself, and every film should scare you a little. I felt Birdman was a comedy, a dark comedy, and this one was challenging like that. And Tom makes me laugh every single day. He has this total commitment, this total madness,” he added. The film is set for a theatrical release on Oct. 2.
CinemaCon, the annual gathering of cinema owners and Hollywood studios, is hosted in Las Vegas by Cinema United, formerly known as the National Association of Theatre Owners. This year’s edition runs April 13-16.