Tag: Tom Cruise

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Digger Review: Tom Cruise’s Wild New Comedy Arrives Oct 2

Tomorrow, October 2, Tom Cruise stops running. He starts digging.

Digger, Alejandro G. Inarritu’s satirical black comedy for Warner Bros., opens in theaters and IMAX this Friday, and it might be the strangest big swing a major studio has taken in years. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, described as the most powerful man in the world: an aging oil tycoon who sets off on a frantic mission to prove he can save humanity from the very disaster his drilling unleashed. The tagline says it all. A comedy of catastrophic proportions.

If that sounds like a lot, good. It is supposed to.

The setup

The film is a Legendary Pictures production, directed by Inarritu from a screenplay he wrote with Oscar winners Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolas Giacobone, his Birdman collaborators, plus Sabina Berman. The story is credited to Berman, Inarritu and Jez Butterworth. It runs 129 minutes, cost somewhere between $160 and $180 million, and was shot entirely in VistaVision, the wide, lush format Inarritu favors.

The premise reads like a dare. The richest man alive breaks the planet, then demands credit for trying to fix it. Around him orbits an ensemble that most directors would trade a kidney for: Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons, with Emma D’Arcy, Sophie Wilde, Robert John Burke and Burn Gorman in support. Behind the camera, the cavalry is just as stacked: cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, editors Stephen Mirrione and Conor O’Neill, production designer Dennis Gassner, composer Cosmo Sheldrake. Count the Oscars in that paragraph and you will run out of fingers.

Why this one is fascinating

This is Cruise’s first film under the Warner Bros. deal he signed in January 2026, and his first real collaboration with the studio since Edge of Tomorrow more than a decade ago. It is also Inarritu’s first English-language feature since The Revenant. Two heavyweights, both overdue for a new chapter, choosing to make a wild comedy about an oil baron trying to outrun his own mess. Nobody saw this coming, which is exactly the point.

Inarritu has described the shoot as joyful chaos. At Cannes he called it “insane” and said Cruise made him laugh every day, praising a comic range he had never seen from the star. A poster designed by artist Ed Ruscha was recently celebrated at LACMA. The studio is treating this like an event, not a release.

Early reactions are genuinely divided, and Warner Bros. is leaning into it. A new ad runs contradictory pull quotes side by side: masterpiece next to unpleasant, brilliant next to baffling, tied together with the line “Same film, different truth.” You can read that as marketing spin or as honesty. Either way, it takes confidence to sell a movie this way.

A comedy built like an epic

The craft here deserves its own paragraph. Inarritu shot the film over six months in the United Kingdom, entirely in VistaVision, a format that gives the image a depth and grain modern digital rarely manages. Lubezki’s involvement alone guarantees it will look like nothing else in the multiplex this fall. Even the marketing has an art-house streak: the key poster was designed by renowned American artist Ed Ruscha and was recently celebrated at LACMA, which is not a sentence you usually write about a Tom Cruise vehicle.

Cruise himself looks unrecognizable in the materials released so far: paunchy, weathered, clutching a decrepit cat on the poster. For a star whose brand is control, letting himself look this undone is the boldest special effect in the movie.

Should you go?

Here is the case for yes. Studios do not make $170 million original comedies anymore. They make sequels, and prequels, and sequels to prequels. When one of the last true movie stars and one of the great living directors decide to spend that kind of money on something nobody asked for, the only correct response is curiosity. The worst version of this movie is still more interesting than the safest franchise entry of the year.

See it big if you can. Lubezki shooting VistaVision is reason enough, and whatever you think of the satire, you will not be bored. Cruise, famously, does not do bored.

Make a day of it. Grab one of NYC’s best breakfast sandwiches before the show, then argue about the ending over hot chicken after. Digger opens October 2 in theaters and IMAX. Go decide for yourself.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Days of Thunder 2: Tom Cruise Back on the Track

Thirty-six years. That’s how long it’s been since Cole Trickle first white-knuckled his way around the track in 1990 — and Tom Cruise is finally coming back. Paramount has officially dated Days of Thunder 2 for June 2, 2028, with Cruise returning as the veteran NASCAR driver and Anne Hathaway co-starring as a talented team owner and engineer. If your pulse quickened reading that, you’re not alone.

The legacy play done right

Hollywood loves a legacy sequel, but it rarely loves them well. This one has a fighting chance because the pieces fit. Cruise described the plot to Entertainment Tonight as “a fun story” — classic Cruise understatement, the same man who called hanging off an airplane “a fun story,” probably. He called Hathaway “talented,” and coming from the hardest-working movie star alive, that lands.

Hathaway told ET she begins “on the track” in March, right after her new film Verity opens October 2, 2026. Read between the lines: real track time, real preparation. This isn’t a green-screen cameo; she’s putting in the work the way Cruise always does.

Why Hathaway changes everything

Here’s the inspired part. Hathaway isn’t playing the love interest or the sideline reporter. She’s a team owner and an engineer working alongside Cruise’s character. That’s a genuinely modern dynamic — brains and grease under the same roof — and it gives the sequel a reason to exist beyond nostalgia. Cole Trickle facing “modern racing challenges” (plot specifics remain unconfirmed, so we’ll leave the inventing to the fan forums) with a brilliant engineer in his corner? That’s a movie.

Director Jonathan Levine (50/50) might seem like a left-field pick until you remember what he does best: heart, humor, and characters you actually care about. A racing movie lives or dies on whether you care who’s in the car. Levine cares about people. Smart hire.

Racing’s moment

There’s never been a better time to make a racing movie. The sport’s cultural footprint has exploded — new fans, packed weekends, and a whole generation discovering the thrill of the track. Cruise, who famously does his own stunts and insists on the real thing wherever cameras allow, is the perfect ambassador for that energy. You can already picture the practical racing footage, the in-car cameras, the sound design that rattles your ribcage. Nobody fakes it like Cruise refuses to fake it.

And Hathaway heading “to the track” in March tells you everything about the production’s ambitions. Real preparation, real locations, real speed. In an age of weightless digital spectacle, there’s something deeply appealing about a movie that plans to make you feel the G-forces.

The Cruise summer-movie machine

Let’s be honest about something: nobody protects the theatrical experience like Tom Cruise. From the Mission: Impossible run to Top Gun: Maverick — the film that basically reminded the world why movie theaters exist — Cruise treats the big screen like sacred ground. Paramount knows it, which is why Days of Thunder 2 is one of their flagship theatrical bets for summer 2028.

And the appetite is real. Motorsport culture is surging right now — from packed grand prix weekends to racing’s growing grip on pop culture — and a Cruise-led return to the track lands right in the slipstream.

What we’d love to see

No spoilers to parse, no leaks to decode — just the good old-fashioned pleasure of anticipation. Will Cole Trickle be the mentor now, the aging lion showing a new generation how it’s done? Will the film reckon with how much racing — and Cruise — has changed in 36 years? The script is by Will Staples, and the only promise so far is Cruise’s own: it’s “a fun story.” Sometimes that’s exactly enough.

Our early verdict

Enthusiastic, with the engine revving. A beloved character, a genuinely exciting co-star in a genuinely exciting role, a director who understands heart, and the most reliable movie star on the planet treating a summer release like it matters. Hollywood’s biggest nights are built on exactly this kind of star power, and June 2, 2028 is officially circled on our calendar.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Tom Cruise filmed in a pandemic and created most likely the best Mission Impossible ever.

Intense acting, emotions and buzz during a lock down. Mission Impossible 7 is THE upcoming American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It will be the seventh installment of the Mission Impossible film series, and the third in the series directed by McQuarrie, following Rogue Nation and Fallout. Release date is September 30, 2022 with Director Christopher McQuarrie. Production companies: Skydance Media, Bad Robot Productions and New Republic Pictures with TC Productions. Music by Lorne Balfe. Based on: Mission Impossible by Bruce Geller. The impressive movie was shot at Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire. Many stunts were  filmed for Mission Impossible 7 right in Middleton. Local photographers and onlookers captured many moments and shared them on social media. Film’s star Tom Cruise was constantly on set to witness the scenes and had a strong impact on the fast paced action of his movie franchise. Some recap footage of edition six will make you wanna see edition 7 asap.