Quick note: Like my last piece, this also started as a LinkedIn post but grew into something longer. And, yes, I’ll be back soon with the Making the Party Fun Again series about the state of the film and TV ecosystem. Stay tuned.
Here’s where I get provocative: Digger (2026) is a bona fide masterpiece.
Brandish those shovels to whack and bury me. I stand by the statement with complete confidence. The fact that so many critics are calling the film a disaster speaks to the state of the industry and what we value in film and TV…and it’s time to get into it.
First, however, let’s consider the film’s opening in the context of what is clearly a transformative moment for the entertainment industry. I’m referring, of course, to the Skydance takeover of Warner Bros.—which proceeds in earnest. Over the week of the film’s wide release…indeed, just a single week…the following occurred:
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved Paramount’s settlement with the 12 Democratic state attorneys general involved in the case preventing the merger. Paramount will officially close the merger on October 6 barring issues.
Mattel’s Ynon Kreiz named as Co-CEO of David Ellison’s Paramount-Warner Bros.
Casey Bloys is now set to run HBO and Paramount+ as Cindy Holland confirms her exit from Paramount.
Paramount and Warner Bros. will retain their studio brand but as Skydance subsidiaries. The studios will release 30 films per year (eventually 32), with 20 wide releases per year.
Mike de Luca and Pam Abdy, who have run the Warner Bros. film division since 2022, are now done at the company. And, yes, they greenlit Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s maligned magnum opus starring Tom Cruise at a budget of $160M.
Do you know what all this feels like? Remember that scene in Goodfellas (1990) (released by Warner Bros., incidentally) when Robert De Niro’s character, Jimmy Conway, has almost everybody killed following a heist so he can control the situation and consolidate wealth as much as possible?... I can hear the piano coda from Layla playing somewhere…
Which brings us back to Digger. Though they didn’t know it at the project’s genesis, Mike and Pam were telling Alejandro and Tom to make one of the most ambitious and virtuosically executed studio films we’ve seen in years. Iñárritu could have returned to benign subject matter after his last film, Bardo (2022), proved a critical and financial flop. He chose instead to make a matryoshka doll satire about the pending apocalypse in which the roles of performance and media all intermingle to both exacerbate downfall and deliver us unto something new. Tom Cruise could have stayed in his lane making Mission Impossible sequels or announced his return to ‘prestige’ filmmaking with some sanitary, restrained drama. No, he decided to put his career on the line by portraying a stage actor playing a power-bloated Texas oil tycoon lamenting the loss of his zombie cat whilst steering humanity into global disaster. Mike de Luca and Pam Abdy, after already taking huge swings on auteur films in the last several years at a fragile company run by chop shop connoisseur David Zaslav, could have said, “maybe this is a bit too ambitious?” Or, at least, they could have put stricter budget restrictions in place. They didn’t. They all have my gratitude.
These people are now being derided, their future ambitions thrown into question. Many notable critics call the film indulgent, garish, detached from reality, frustrating…and those are just some of the withering critiques cast about without any appreciation of the attendant irony.
Guess what? Yes! The film could be described in those terms, but have you taken a look lately at your surroundings? Have you not caught yourself staring askance in the mirror? Digger does as its title suggests…drilling holes into one melting surface after another….and, in so doing, reflects and refracts, with terrible brilliance, our own complicit foolishness in the abject fusion of fake facts and narcoticized malaise we nonchalantly term ‘the new normal’. It is a visually stunning, outrageously well-acted and layered—and deeply human—interrogation of the lies we tell and complex parts we play in a fragmented, tech-addled society sickened by alienation as we collectively bemoan an environmentally compromised earth while simultaneously clamoring for energy-sucking chatbots to save our asses. And, yes, it’s funny as hell.
It’s also, absolutely, a big swing, a narrative and aesthetic leap without some superhero to carry the load. A gigantic risk of imagination with everything on the line.
Too much to process, I guess?
Whether consciously pursuing mediocrity or not, it’s as if we want our cinema culture to remain grounded and gutless. Sure, we countenance a few low-budget, politically approved indies at elite film festivals to signal ‘artistic appreciation’ and ‘social consciousness’, but if major Hollywood players go for broke professionally, creatively, financially…we recoil and retreat into what’s familiar and safe.
Well, if we don’t PAY ATTENTION, this could become the norm. Will the new super conglomerates merely put out interconnected-and-inoffensive-IP reaching consumers across multiple transactional touchpoints? 30+ films per annual cycle of cookie-cutter fantasies on constant repeat? Ya know, like a damned toy company placating infantilized audiences with premiere actors suited up as G.I. Joe action figures, our diminished directors and showrunners stewarding an endless series of bubble gum widgetainment packaged as ‘compassionate-AND!-commercial’ storytelling?
Will fearless artists in film and TV get to be artists without being labeled as pretentious or grandstanding, because they took a chance on uninhibited expression?
I know…I know, I’m being too reckless and romantic…or, maybe, I just want to watch something that wants to matter.
We’re at level 4 here, people. Don’t understand that reference? Go. See. Digger.
Sources
Belloni, Matthew. “The Mike & Pam Era at Warner Bros. Is Ending.” Puck, 2 Oct. 2026, puck.news/the-mike-and-pam-era-at-warner-bros-is-ending/.
“Digger Critic Reviews.” Metacritic, www.metacritic.com/movie/digger-2026/critic-reviews/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2026.
Huston, Caitlin, and Alex Weprin. “Mattel’s Ynon Kreiz Named as Co-CEO of David Ellison’s Paramount-Warner Bros.” The Hollywood Reporter, 30 Sept. 2026, www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/mattels-ynon-kreiz-named-as-co-ceo-of-david-ellisons-paramount-warner-bros-1236717448/.
Kroll, Justin. “Bradley Cooper To Star As Duke In Paramount’s New ‘G.I. Joe’ Movie From Director Danny McBride.” Deadline, 1 Oct. 2026, www.deadline.com/2026/10/bradley-cooper-duke-g-i-joe-movie-danny-mcbride-1237144575/.
Spangler, Todd. “Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Set to Close Next Week after Judge OKs Settlement with State AGs.” Variety, 30 Sept. 2026, variety.com/2026/film/news/paramount-warner-bros-merger-judge-approves-settlement-ags-1236893467/.
Stelter, Brian, and Liam Reilly. "Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Moves Forward after Judge Approves Settlement." CNN, 30 Sept. 2026, www.cnn.com/2026/09/30/media/paramount-warner-bros-merger-settlement.
This is the end. Want more?
As someone who is not film adept (not big on movies, tom cruise, or the entertainment industry) and accidentally watched this movie (it was pouring and my friend didn’t want me to drive home and the theater was next to where we had dinner and it was playing the soonest) I loved it. I think people went into expecting something else, I expected to be bored but was covering my mouth to mute my laughs. It was intriguing and thought provoking. People just don’t want to think about it. We want easily digestible messages that soothe us. This was not soothing in the slightest and calls out just about everyone for being enraged and blame shifting whilst profiting off the problem.
Maybe I liked it cause it Digger’s speech to the European leaders is something I’ve been complaining about to be bsf. Maybe because I like the self-deprecating humor of it all. Maybe because I just applied to a job with Exxon that I hope I get because I’d rather profit than be green. People just don’t like being honest with themselves. Was it worth the budget? Maybe not. But they’ve spent more on far worse films