Tom Cruise: Digger is coming

Like I said in today’s site open, CinemaCon is all about Movie Stars, and that’s definitely what Warner Bros was banking on to generate excitement for its upcoming schedule yesterday at their presentation. Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, and the biggest of them all (that’s how they referred to him) … Tom Cruise.

And not for a franchise film or some kind of action adventure but a satirical comedy. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger comes out in October and the convention was given an exclusive preview of Tom’s performance as Digger Rockwell. Per The Hollywood Reporter:

“In the footage, Cruise is 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.”

“Unrecognisable” here is Hollywood code for “unattractive”, so basically Tom is playing ugly, inside and out. This is not Ethan Hunt jumping out of airplanes trying to save the world, it’s Tom as Digger, ruining the world and then, fueled by his billionaire ego, trying to repair it… or, I suppose, perform as though he can be the hero to repair what he caused in the first place. So the film, perhaps, is a meditation on the harm that these rich f-cks have done to humanity and to our planet.

It has been a long ass minute since we’ve seen Tom in a role like this. He has spent pretty much 20 years trying to save his reputation by saving the world at the cineplex. Now, finally, he’s willing to stretch himself in a different direction creatively. That, in part, is why people are already talking about an Oscar nomination. Deadline had their article up about Tom’s Oscar chances as soon as the event was over, maybe even before. But that was probably always the expectation, the minute it was announced that Tom would be starring in an Iñárritu film, there’s been anticipation, especially given Iñárritu’s track record for directing actors to nominations and/or wins. Leonardo DiCaprio, after all, finally won his Oscar for his performance in The Revenant.

As I’ve mentioned, Tom’s also been spending a lot more time in Los Angeles than he has since the mid-2000s. For at least a decade he was living in London but he’s out and about in Hollywood often these days, re-engaging with the community that has embraced him once again. Curious to see if that will be a factor during award season – IF, that is, Digger lives up to the hype and really does become a contender.

There’s also the issue of when and where Digger will screen, if it will make the festival rounds. The film is definitely not heading to Cannes and Deadline reported the other day that the fall festivals seem unlikely too, part of a possible emerging trend of big studio films not going the festival route… although that could change, depending on the marketing strategy.

Marketing a Tom Cruise film usually involves a global blitz, all kinds of bombast in cities around the world, to go along with the bombast of the movies we’ve associated him with over the last decade-plus. Digger is not that kind of film so I’m also interested in how they’ll be selling it once we get deeper into the year.

For now, though, he’s had some time on his hands. Tom Cruise has not been on a movie set since wrapping Digger almost a year ago. And I’m not sure that there’s anything else he has close to firing up between now and when he starts the press tour for Digger. Seriously, is he OK?