Digger (English with English Subtitles)

Digger (2026): Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, at Victory Cinema Some films arrive with a trailer. Digger arrives with an argument. Alejandro G. Iñárritu — the director of Birdman and The Revenant, and a two-time Oscar winner for Best Director — has made his first English-language film in over a decade, and he has made it with Tom Cruise. Digger opens at Victory Cinema, Bengaluru, on Friday 2 October 2026 — Gandhi Jayanti, the start of a long weekend. We are playing it in the original English, with English subtitles on every show. The story Tom Cruise plays Digger, the most powerful man in the world. When a disaster of his own making begins to spiral out of control, he sets out on a frantic mission to prove that he — and only he — can save humanity before everything is destroyed. Warner Bros. describes it as a high-stakes original drama; those who have seen it describe something stranger: a dark, satirical comedy about power, ego and the people who clean up after both. We will not say more than that. Digger is the kind of film that works best if you walk in knowing only the premise. Tom Cruise, as you have not seen him For thirty years Tom Cruise has been the man who runs, jumps and hangs off aircraft. Digger asks him to do something harder: to play a man who believes his own legend. Cruise has called the role a real leap into the unknown. Early viewers have called it his bravest and riskiest performance in two decades — manic one moment, melancholy the next. If you have followed Cruise from Top Gun to Mission: Impossible, this is the film where he steps off the stunt rig and into a character. It is worth seeing on a big screen for that alone. The company around him Iñárritu has surrounded Cruise with actors who can hold a scene against him: Sandra Hüller — the Oscar-nominated star of Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest Riz Ahmed — Oscar winner, and the star of Sound of Metal Jesse Plemons — Oscar nominee, from The Power of the Dog and Killers of the Flower Moon John Goodman — from The Big Lebowski to Argo Michael Stuhlbarg — from A Serious Man, Call Me by Your Name and The Shape of Water The people behind the camera Alejandro G. Iñárritu directs, and co-wrote the screenplay with Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolás Giacobone, from a story by Berman, Iñárritu and Jez Butterworth. It is produced by Iñárritu, Mary Parent and Tom Cruise for Legendary, and released by Warner Bros. Pictures. The cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki — the only person to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography three years running (Gravity, Birdman and The Revenant). His reunion with Iñárritu is reason enough for anyone who loves how films look. The editors are Stephen Mirrione, an Oscar winner, and Conor O'Neill; the production designer is Dennis Gassner; the music is by Cosmo Sheldrake; the costumes are by Jacqueline West; and the prosthetic make-up is by Kazu Hiro, a two-time Oscar winner. Shot in VistaVision — and why it matters Digger was shot entirely in VistaVision, a large-negative film format in which the film runs sideways through the camera, so each frame is roughly twice the size of standard 35mm. More picture area means more detail, finer grain and a deeper, richer image. The format was born in the 1950s for the biggest Hollywood spectacles and has come back in recent years for filmmakers who want the image to hold up on the largest screens. A film photographed like this deserves the right projector. At Victory Cinema it is projected by our 4K Barco laser projector, on a full-size single screen — the way it was meant to be seen, not on a phone or a television. Why English subtitles Every film at Victory plays with subtitles, as a matter of house policy — Digger included. Iñárritu's films are dense with overlapping dialogue, fast talk and satire that lands in a single line. Subtitles mean you catch every word the first time: the jokes, the accents, and the lines that matter. What people are saying Some critics call Digger one of the most visually inventive studio films in years and admire its ambition; others found it baffling or hard to warm to. Nobody has called it ordinary. Our view at Victory is simple: films that divide people are the ones worth arguing about afterwards — and the argument is better when you have seen the film on a real screen.

The story behind the story

Digger has been ten years in the making. Iñárritu began turning the idea over after The Revenant in 2015 and has described it as less a script than a recurring obsession that would not leave him alone. He brought it to Tom Cruise about seven years ago. Cruise had admired Iñárritu's work ever since his first film, Amores perros, but this is the first time the two have worked together.

Cruise's character is Digger Rockwell, an oil magnate who has come to believe that reality should simply agree with him. When his company sets off an ecological catastrophe, he decides that the man who caused the disaster is the only man fit to fix it. Iñárritu calls it a comedy born out of tragedy — absurd, dangerous and funny in the same breath.

The writers

The screenplay is by Iñárritu with Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone and Sabina Berman, from a story by Berman, Iñárritu and Jez Butterworth.

Dinelaris and Giacobone shared the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Birdman with Iñárritu and Armando Bo, and Giacobone has worked with him since Biutiful. Sabina Berman is one of Mexico's best-known playwrights, novelists and journalists. Jez Butterworth is the British playwright behind Jerusalem, and he knows how to write for Tom Cruise: he co-wrote Edge of Tomorrow, as well as Ford v Ferrari.

Sound and music

Iñárritu treats sound as seriously as the picture — think of the drumbeat that drives Birdman, or the breath, wind and river of The Revenant. Digger was recorded on set by production sound mixer Lloyd Dudley, and the film's final sound mix was completed in London.

The music is by Cosmo Sheldrake, the English composer and multi-instrumentalist known for building songs out of recordings of the natural world — birdsong, animal calls and field recordings. For a film about a man at war with nature, that is a telling choice. At Victory you will hear it on JBL Professional cinema speakers, in a hall built for sound.

How it was made

Digger was filmed at Pinewood Studios in England between November 2024 and May 2025. Lubezki shot it mainly on VistaVision using a camera built in 1954, fitted with Leica lenses designed specially for the production, with some scenes on standard 35mm film. The negative was processed and scanned by Cinelab in the UK. In an age of digital cameras, this is a big studio film shot, developed and scanned from real film.

Tom Cruise disappears under prosthetic make-up designed by Kazu Hiro, a two-time Oscar winner (Darkest Hour and Bombshell), working with Alessandro Bertolazzi, who won the Oscar for Suicide Squad. He speaks with a thick Southern American accent and is barely recognisable. It is Cruise's first lead role outside a franchise since American Made in 2017.

The world around him was built by production designer Dennis Gassner, an Oscar winner whose work includes Blade Runner 2049 and 1917, with set decoration by Anna Pinnock. The costumes are by Jacqueline West, who dressed The Revenant and Dune. Casting is by Francine Maisler, who cast The Revenant, Birdman and Dune.

The world premiere

Digger had its world premiere in London on 22 September 2026, and rolls out around the world from 30 September. In India it opens on Friday 2 October, the same day as in the United States.

Watching Digger at Victory Cinema Victory Cinema is a 505-seat single-screen cinema on Magadi Main Road, Kamakshipalya, in west Bengaluru. We are easy to reach from Vijayanagar, Rajajinagar, Basaveshwaranagar, Nagarbhavi, Kamakshipalya and the whole Magadi Road side of the city — and audiences travel from across Bengaluru for the experience. What you get when you book with us: No advertisements — the film starts at the time on your ticket, and the interval has no commercials either; Picture from a 4K Barco laser projector and JBL Professional cinema sound; The exact seats you choose, every time; No booking fee when you book on victorycinema.in; Your ticket on WhatsApp and SMS within seconds of payment; An instant refund if anything goes wrong with a booking — your money is never held for days; Parking and a canteen on site. Digger releases on Friday 2 October 2026 — a holiday — so the first weekend is a long one. Pick your show below and book directly with Victory Cinema.