What Is Digger About? Tom Cruise’s New Satire Explained

Digger is a 2026 black comedy satire directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. It stars Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an enormously powerful oil tycoon whose drilling operations in Greenland trigger a potential global catastrophe. The film opened in U.S. theaters on October 2, 2026, and has drawn sharply divided reviews.

The story follows Digger Rockwell, a billionaire who has built an empire on fossil fuels. He lives in a vast mansion filled with taxidermy and dotes on his elderly, sick cat. When a drilling operation in Greenland causes a massive crack in an ice shelf, a gigantic section of ice breaks away and begins drifting toward Europe, threatening catastrophic flooding. Digger’s immediate response is to keep drilling, but the crisis quickly escalates into an international emergency.

Governments scramble for solutions, scientists try to make themselves heard, and Digger, whose business helped create the problem, finds himself at the center of the fallout. Rather than quietly accepting responsibility, he launches a frantic effort to prove that he is the one person capable of fixing the crisis. He races to stop the disaster while trying to preserve his reputation as the man who can save the world.

The film’s biggest surprise comes at the end of its first act. What appears to be a straightforward narrative about an oil tycoon is revealed to be a play-within-a-movie. The mansion, the characters, and the crisis are all part of a stage production called Fossil Fools. Tom Cruise is not playing Digger Rockwell directly. He is playing Curtis Markson, an actor portraying Digger in the play.

The play Fossil Fools was a cult hit on the London stage some twenty years earlier. The real Digger Rockwell, according to the film’s internal history, allegedly died by suicide while living abandoned on a dilapidated oil rig. The actor Markson resents how garishly big the production looks and insists that the real Digger was more tactful and measured than the supervillain caricature being performed.

Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu co-wrote the film with Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Nicolás Giacobone. The film was shot entirely in VistaVision. The cast includes Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell and Curtis Markson, Riz Ahmed as Dr. Ganesh, Sandra Hüller, John Goodman as the President of the United States, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma D’Arcy, Sophie Wilde as the director, Robert John Burke, and Burn Gorman.

Iñárritu said the project took nearly a decade to get made and collapsed three times before Warner Bros. and Legendary backed it. ‘In the world of fear we are living in, everybody wants certainty,’ Iñárritu said. ‘This film is not any of that. For it to be made and to nail the tone was a big bet.’

Riz Ahmed recalled filming during the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. ‘I remember looking out at the crew who were watching the fire move in real time through satellite imagery, and they were thinking, I’m about to lose my home,’ Ahmed said. ‘It was right there. So much of what is explored, exposed, and satirized in this film was staring us right in the face.’

Digger opened in 3,300 North American theaters on October 2, 2026, with an IMAX release. The production budget was reported at $125 million initially, though multiple reports later placed the cost between $160 million and $180 million. The film earned $3.4 million on its opening day and finished its opening weekend in fifth place with $8 million domestically. International earnings totaled $12 million from 74 markets, bringing the worldwide opening to $20 million.

Review reception has been sharply polarized. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film hovered around a 52 to 53 percent approval rating from critics. On Metacritic, it holds a score of 44 out of 100. The Boston Globe called it ‘the worst movie of Tom Cruise’s career,’ while The London Evening Standard described it as ‘audacious, risky, terrific fun.’ Warner Bros. released an advertisement for the film that embraced the divisive reactions, cutting together both positive and negative quotes. The ad features Cruise’s character saying, ‘You know what? F— those people!’ and later, ‘They’re afraid to tell the truth — whatever that is.’