As we enter the next Cannes Film Festival edition—one that will not have a single major studio film in its lineup—a trend is beginning to emerge: Hollywood’s outright ghosting of festivals.
The latest example is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Digger,” starring Tom Cruise, which Deadline now reports will be skipping festivals entirely ahead of its October release.
To put things into perspective, six of Iñárritu’s seven films premiered at either Cannes or Venice. The only exception was “The Revenant” (2015), which earned Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar. That film bypassed the festival circuit because it wrapped shooting in August—just as Venice was about to begin—and was only about four months away from its scheduled release.
Still, it’s understandable why Venice is being passed on this time for “Digger.” Warner Bros.’ “Joker: Folie à Deux” was met with a notably poor reception on the Lido in 2024, and the fallout reportedly put the studio in damage-control mode for weeks. Warner Bros. may now be looking to avoid another high-profile festival misstep, sticking instead to the same strategy as “One Battle After Another” last year.
This news comes less than 24 hours after “Digger” unveiled its first sneak peek at CinemaCon last night. The footage showed Tom Cruise, in a transformative turn, playing Digger Rockwell, the most powerful man in the world. Cruise’s look for the film is that of a balding, pot-bellied, cocky Texas oil tycoon, complete with a thick Southern accent.
In the film, Rockwell is warned about a massive glacier named Judy—hence the film’s original working title—that is set to wreak global chaos. When he initially refuses to heed the warnings, the consequences become dire, ultimately forcing him to step up and try to save the planet from catastrophe.
John Goodman, Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wilde, Emma D’Arcy, Robert John Burke, Burn Gorman, and Michael Stuhlbarg also star. “Digger” hits theaters on October 2.