The London event doubled as the Royal Film Performance, a charity gala for The Film and TV Charity, ahead of the film's October 2 theatrical release.
Tom Cruise had royalty in the room for his latest transformation. Digger, his black comedy with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, had its world premiere in London on Tuesday, and Prince William and Princess Catherine turned up to watch.
The screening at the Odeon Luxe also served as this year's Royal Film Performance, an annual gala run by The Film and TV Charity, with proceeds going toward the organisation's work. Leicester Square was reworked into a maze for the night, with props from the film scattered around, including an Arctic-set backdrop and Digger's shovel, plus blown-up stills of Cruise in character, some alongside his cat.
William arrived in a black velvet jacket, Kate in purple. They came late enough that the carpet was already winding down, working the line to meet the cast, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons among them. They lingered longest with Cruise and Iñárritu, a good ten minutes of conversation, at one point cracking up at something Cruise said. The King's band played them in with a trumpet rendition of the national anthem as the crowd stood.
Onstage, Cruise took the mic to thank his royal guests directly. "We want to thank the royal highnesses for supporting this event, and just to tell them that we love them and we really appreciate what they do for the arts, for this country and for the world," he said, according to Variety. He also singled out producer Mary Parent and turned to his director with something close to reverence. "Alejandro, you are one of one, and I have so admired your films from the very first one. And to have the opportunity to work with you has been one of the great dreams of mine and a pleasure," Cruise said, adding that he'd never seen a character like the one Iñárritu had built.
That character is Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon the film's synopsis calls the most powerful man in the world, who spends the runtime racing to undo a disaster of his own making before it swallows everything. The Times of India describes it as a story built around power, greed and the threat of ecological collapse, with Cruise's turn read as a kind of summation of everything he's done as an actor.
The London stop caps weeks of promotion, a GQ cover, Jimmy Fallon, a spot on Travis and Jason Kelce's podcast. He was at BAFTA headquarters the night before too, making an unscripted case for why cinema survives whatever AI throws at it. "You know, it is coming and it's going to happen," he said of artificial intelligence. "But people want to see real things. They're going to movie theaters. I always believe in humanity."
Digger opens in theatres worldwide on October 2, from Warner Bros. Pictures. Whether audiences agree with him about what they want to see is the question the box office will actually answer.
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