Tom Cruise is completely unrecognizable at first glance in his new movie “Digger.”
The trailer for director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s satirical black comedy film was released on Monday, showing the character’s transformation into an eccentric billionaire named Digger Rockwell.
At 64 years old, he has gray hair and wears prosthetics that make him look older and heavier than he normally appears.
In the film’s official poster, Cruise is seen wearing a suit and cowboy hat, holding a shovel and standing on top of a globe.
Cruise shared the image on social media and wrote, “Digger. Or die. Digger. In theaters October 2nd only.”
“It can’t be Tom Cruise,” one social media user claimed in the comments section, with another adding: “That can’t be true.”
“Digger” will be Cruise’s first film outside of “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun” since 2017’s “American Made,” in which he played Barry Seal, a commercial airline pilot turned drug smuggler.
Directed by four-time Oscar winner Iñárritu, “Digger” stars as a southern oil tycoon racing to stop a massive global ecological disaster caused by Cruise.
Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma Darcy, and Robert John Burke make up the rest of the cast.
At a Q&A event for the film in Los Angeles on Thursday, Cruise said “Digger” was the most unique project he had worked on in his career.
“I’ve never had anything that challenged me, and Alejandro, when he came into the game, had never had anything like this before,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And when you watch this movie, you know it’s completely original.”
Iñárritu, 62, said at the event that Cruz was the frontrunner for the lead role.
“We needed Tom for this movie. We’ve wanted to work together since the beginning of the century,” the filmmaker explained. “I’ve admired him as an actor for years, so that wasn’t a surprise to me.
“The surprise was to discover that the humanity behind the actor was as extraordinary as the acting I had seen throughout his career,” he continued about Cruise.
At CinemaCon in April, Cruise told the audience that it “took 40 years” for him to be able to express the “multilayers” of his “Digger” character.
“This movie is wild and funny and I can’t wait for everyone to see it,” he teased.
“Digger” will be released in theaters on October 2nd.
