The filmmaker first began developing the story with Mexican writer Sabina Berman in 2017, but the screenplay kept changing as events in the real world began moving in unexpected directions. Filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger has been in the works for almost a decade. The film eventually took a different shape altogether, with Iñárritu turning to a theatrical format to tell the story. [ SPOILERS AHEAD ].
Tom Cruise leads the cast
Tom stars 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 are also part of the cast.
Alejandro and Sabina started writing Digger in 2017. Talking about the film’s long development, Alejandro tells, “This film started 10 years ago with Sabina Berman and I writing the screenplay in 2017. The film stars Tom Cruise in the title role of Digger Rockwell, but that is not the only character he plays. Tom also plays Curtis, an actor, father, husband and artist who is portraying Digger. The strange thing about developing a narrative that exists so much in the present, is that reality kept overtaking our fictionalized version of it. Reality that, every day these past nine years, has been surpassing fiction, leaving us behind, forcing us to adjust, making us feel that the ground beneath our feet, like the permafrost, was about to collapse. We learned that reality gives us events, but it’s imagination that allows us to recognize ourselves in them. Somewhere between the two, this movie began. The changing story eventually led Iñárritu to rethink how Digger should be presented. He adds, “I was hiking with my family, celebrating my 60th birthday, and it was there when the idea came to me—I felt it in my stomach that I had found the only way to do it: the idea of a theater play in a Brechtian way. It was the best birthday present ever! It has to do with how we tell the story of ourselves and have to approach something like that without fighting each other. Emmanuel Lubezki serves as director of photography, while Conor O’Neill and Oscar winner Stephen Mirrione are the editors. Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline West, Oscar-winning makeup and hair designer Alessandro Bertolazzi and Oscar-nominated casting director Francine Maisler are also part of the team. Dennis Gassner and Richard Johnson serve as production designers, with Oscar-winning prosthetic makeup designer Kazu Hiro and composer Cosmo Sheldrake also joining the film.
Developing a story so closely connected to the present became increasingly difficult as real events continued to change the context around the screenplay, according to the filmmaker. He said he found the answer while hiking with his family during his 60th birthday celebrations. In an interview with HT City, he also says, “The representation of reality is framed in a way in the film that we can totally separate ourselves and see ourselves and laugh at ourselves to find a common ground about a very complicated thing.
