{"id":400208,"date":"2026-04-15T18:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400208\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T18:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:41:15","slug":"tom-cruise-film-digger-unlikely-to-launch-at-a-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400208\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise Film ‘Digger’ Unlikely To Launch At A Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros<\/a> and Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s Tom Cruise<\/a> starrer Digger<\/a>, which wowed<\/a> at CinemaCon on Tuesday, is unlikely to debut at a fall festival, we can reveal.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s October 2 release date has led to speculation, and anticipation, in many quarters that Venice<\/a> or another fall festival would be in the cards. Six of I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s seven films have premiered at either Cannes or Venice. However, according to multiple well-placed sources, that\u2019s not the current plan. Of course, things can change, but at the moment, we hear that\u2019s how the land lies.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarner Bros and Legendary<\/a> declined comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere has been some press of late suggesting that studios are turning away from A-list festivals. We reported multiple times that major studios were likely to be very thin on the ground at Cannes. In the end, they are non-existent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs the decision not to send Digger \u2014 one of the year\u2019s most anticipated movies \u2014 further evidence of this \u201ctrend\u201d? I\u2019m not there just yet.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s unquestionable that at times of belt-tightening glitzy premieres at glamorous locations can be an unwanted cost. There\u2019s also the danger that a movie gets a lackluster response from critics and is hampered ahead of its general release (see Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux). Crucially, Warner Bros\u2019 One Battle After Another and Sinners both proved they could dominate awards season and fare well at the box office \u2014 especially the latter in terms of box office \u2014 despite not getting a festival berth; the same was true for A24\u2019s Marty Supreme. There are high hopes from those working on the project that Digger can perform similarly well.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut, I\u2019m not quite there to call it a trend yet. Last Cannes saw a special launch for Cruise\u2019s latest Mission: Impossible film. Admittedly, it didn\u2019t score stellar box office, but it was a unique spotlight on the project. Venice and Telluride last year included plenty of studio projects from streamers and traditional players. This Venice is expected \u2014 by media, at least \u2014 to host a number of streamer and studio movies. Netflix, which doesn\u2019t rely on the same theatrical returns for its films, has long been a fan of Venice and is expected back on the Lido this edition. But so was Digger.<\/p>\n

\n\tPoint being, this may be the start of a thing, but I\u2019m prepared to wait to see the shape of the Venice and other fall festival lineups before declaring that studios have turned their backs on A-list festivals. These moves tend to be cyclical, anyway, and often depend on macro economics or the preferences of leadership, etc.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Digger, the dark comedy will see Tom Cruise, in a transformative turn, play the most powerful man in the world, who races to prove he is humanity\u2019s savior before the disaster he unleashed destroys everything. A trailer revealed Tuesday in the room for exhibitors in Las Vegas saw Cruise as a balding, big-bellied, brash, Southern-accented industrialist called Digger Rockwell.<\/p>\n

\n\tJohn Goodman, Jesse Plemons, Sandra H\u00fcller, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wilde, Emma D\u2019Arcy, Robert John Burke, Burn Gorman and Michael Stuhlbarg also star. You can read more about the WB-Legendary presentation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Tom<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise in \u2018Digger\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros and Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s Tom Cruise starrer Digger, which wowed at CinemaCon on Tuesday, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,176208,93,61,60,12973,65640,5592,35168,2031],"class_list":{"0":"post-400208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-digger","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-legendary","14":"tag-the-dish","15":"tag-tom-cruise","16":"tag-venice","17":"tag-warner-bros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}