I’m not sure any actor in history has saved the world on screen more times than Tom Cruise. So perhaps that is some of the perverse fun intended in Digger, where Tom Cruise undergoes a radical physical transformation — he’s gray, balding, paunchy, and speaking with a thick accent — to play a billionaire businesseman whose creed sets off some sort of environmental calamity. It’s up to him to fix it, or maybe just to preserve his reputation while the world falls apart around him. (He does also seem to spend a lot of time tending to an ill cat.)

The film is co-written and directed by  Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the man behind movies like Birdman and The Revenant. And it’s pretty clear from the movie’s trailer that Cruise is swinging for the fences here (with a shovel) going for the sort of big awards-contending performance that anchored those other two films.

Watch the first Digger trailer below:

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Well, they are certainly all going for it — it being some kind of 2026 riff on Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. (And hey, if anyone is qualified to star in a Strangelove now, it might as well be Cruise, the guy who starred in Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut.)

Here is Digger’s official synopsis:

The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything. Cruise stars in the title role, alongside Oscar winner Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Oscar nominee Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Oscar nominee Jesse Plemons.  Robert John Burke, Emma D’Arcy, Burn Gorman and Sophie Wilde also star.

Digger is scheduled to open in theaters on October 2.