Disney+ may have canceled the Holes reboot, but there’s at least one person in Hollywood who still wants to dig. On December 18, Warner Bros. revealed the title for Tom Cruise’s upcoming Oscar play: Digger. The film is helmed by Academy favorite Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), who directed Leonardo DiCaprio to his overdue Oscar win in 2014 for The Revenant. Can he do the same for Cruise?
In the teaser, a seemingly prosthetic-covered Cruise poses with a shovel while wearing cowboy boots. “Tom Cruise … is … Digger,” the text reveals, while “O Green World” by Gorillaz plays. The title card calls the film “a comedy of catastrophic proportions.” Along with Cruise, who stars as Digger Rockwell, the film will feature a slew of previous Oscar-nominated actors, such as Jesse Plemons (Power of the Dog), Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), and Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal). They’ll be joined by a prestigious crew including Call Me by Your Name star Michael Stuhlbarg, Babygirl actress Sophie Wilde, House of the Dragon’s Emma D’Arcy, and, oh yeah, comedy icon John Goodman.
Technically, Cruise has won an Oscar already: He received an honorary award at the 2025 Governors Awards. If he wins a competitive Oscar after his honorary one, he would follow in the footsteps of Paul Newman, who won his first competitive Oscar the year after his lifetime achievement, for The Color of Money. Cruise hasn’t been nominated in a competitive acting category since the ’90s, when he was nominated three times, for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia. In the years since, he has starred primarily in blockbuster action films that the Academy typically ignores. Now, it’s time to see if Cruise still has the Oscar juice when the movie premieres on October 2, 2026.
New Tom Cruise Movie
