Tom Cruise unveils remarkable transformation in Digger trailer: ‘I’ve never had something that could challenge me in this way’

The film will be released worldwide in early October and stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, “the most powerful man in the world” on a mission to save the world from an ecological disaster.

Ahead of the trailer’s launch, Cruise recently spoke to press and fans at an event the Warner Bros launch in Los Angeles, saying that it was unlike any project he had worked on before.

“I have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither had Alejandro when we went in, ever,” said the actor, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “When you see this film, it’s totally original.”

The trailer sees Cruise with a grey combover, a pot belly and a strong southern accent in the role of an oil baron whose company may have triggered an ecological disaster that could lead to nuclear war. Per the film’s logline, he then “embarks on a frantic mission to prove that he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything”.

The supporting cast includes John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons and Sophie Wilde.

At the Los Angeles event, Cruise said that his admiration of Iñárritu dates back to 2000’s gritty drama Amores Perros. “What a brilliant film. It was amazing,” the actor enthused, according to Variety. “When I saw that film, I don’t know how you all felt, but I was like, ‘What the fuck? This guy!’

“The performances. The design. The colour in the movie. Every aspect of that film was very thought out, very detailed, and you could feel the powerful human voice of someone who was incredibly skilled at what they were doing.”

Around seven years ago, Iñárritu pitched Digger to Cruise over the course of several days where the director read the actor the script aloud.

“I’m listening to everything that’s in his mind, so that I can understand that, and then I know how to contribute to it, and bring that collaboration together. It was beautiful,” Cruise said.

“There’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, ‘Let’s do this. And I trust you, and whatever we’re going to do, I know this is going to be a hell of an experience,’” he added.

In a video message shown at the LA event, Iñárritu said that the idea for Digger came to him as he was finishing up his 2015 epic The Revenant, which won him the best director Oscar as well as best actor for star Leonardo DiCaprio.

“It was just after The Revenant when I had an idea,” the director recalled. Not a script, not a film, just a relentless, recurring obsession that has endured through all these wild years. I knew who this character was.

“I knew how he spoke, how he survived, how he seduced reality into agreeing with him. But it took me 10 years to do this film, because I wasn’t looking for a story. I was looking for the right way of saying it. And it’s absurd, it’s dangerous, but certainly comedic, because the source of great comedy is tragedy.”

Digger was filmed in VistaVision, a high-definition analog process first introduced in the 1950s that has seen a return to popularity recently, with films such as The Brutalist and One Battle After Another shot with the technique.