Digger release date in Malaysia: Tom Cruise's Iñárritu satire opens 1 October, before the US

Digger, Tom Cruise's black comedy with the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, opens in Malaysia on Thursday 1 October, a day before Warner Bros releases it in the United States and Britain. TGV's and GSC's pages both carry the date and Paragon lists it as well; the sessions will appear on this site as soon as the chains publish them.

Cruise as an oil tycoon who starts the disaster

The first look came in April, at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. Free Malaysia Today, carrying AFP's report, described Cruise, then 63, transformed into Digger Rockwell, an eccentric oil tycoon with thinning grey hair, a beer belly, a Southern accent and a fondness for cats, who sets off an ecological disaster that brings the world to the brink of nuclear war and then scrambles to save it. Cruise told the theatre owners it had taken him 40 years to be able to play the part, and summed it up plainly: "The movie is wild, it's funny."

Iñárritu, the four-time Oscar winner behind Birdman and The Revenant, said the two had first discussed the film seven years earlier, while Cruise was making Top Gun: Maverick. He called the role a different kind of fearlessness from the stunts Cruise is known for, possibly his most challenging: "It was a high-wire act."

Shot in Britain, on VistaVision

The Sun's report on the trailer in June filled in the rest. Iñárritu wrote the film with Sabina Berman, Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolas Giacobone, and it is his first English-language feature since The Revenant in 2015. Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Sophie Wilde, Emma D'Arcy, Michael Stuhlbarg and John Goodman are in the cast, with Goodman as the American president and Ahmed as his assistant. Emmanuel Lubezki shot it in the United Kingdom on 35mm in the VistaVision format, and Cruise produces with Iñárritu and Mary Parent. The trailer opened with a run through Cruise's earlier films before showing him in grey hair and prosthetic make-up.

Screen Daily reported in August that the film would have its world premiere as the Royal Film Performance in London's Leicester Square on 22 September, the 73rd such screening in the Film and TV Charity's 100 years, rather than at the autumn festivals. The makers said it was filmed and finished in the UK, which made London the place to show it first.

What the listings do not say yet

Neither big chain has published a classification or a running time, which is usual a week before opening. GSC's page lists it in English with Malay subtitles; TGV files it as a black comedy. It shares its opening Thursday with Verity and the Indonesian Munafik remake.

Where it will be

The Digger page carries the date and the chains for now, and will list every cinema and session, with the hall type marked, as the chains release them. Once sessions are out, the showtimes page will put each cinema's Digger times side by side, and every session links to the chain's own booking page.