After Digger, Does Tom Cruise Need This Long-Rumored Marvel Role More Than Ever?

Moviegoers can always count on Alejandro González Iñárritu to deliver the unexpected. The Mexican filmmaker behind Birdman and The Revenant, Iñárritu recently released his new film, Digger, starring Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon whose drilling creates an ecological crisis. With a reported production budget somewhere between $125 million and $180 million, the film earned only $8 million on its opening weekend. That puts Digger on track to become not only a box office flop but potentially one of the biggest bombs in cinematic history. Even though the film itself is certainly far from commercial in the traditional sense of the word, its disappointing performance has taken the industry by surprise.

However, for longtime Marvel fans, there may be a bit of a silver lining. Following the epic misfire that is Digger, Cruise might be looking for something a bit more reliable to rebound. And given how well-received Spider-Man: Brand New Day has been and the excitement surrounding the upcoming release of Avengers: Doomsday, the time might be right for him to finally hop aboard the MCU. As fans may recall, there’s one character that Cruise has a long history with and whom he might finally be ready and willing to play now. By all accounts, the stage is perfectly set for it.

Digger Was Supposed to Be Tom Cruise’s Oscar Play After Nearly a Decade of Sequels

For years, the internet has gotten used to dubbing Cruise “the last movie star.” And in some respects, he has been. The peak of Cruise’s career placed him among several A-list Hollywood stars who could essentially turn any film into a box office smash. Just put their name and iconic face on a poster, and the studio would have an easy $100 million hit, the benchmark for mainstream success back in the 1990s. Though Cruise still retains a certain level of fame, since 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, Cruise has relied mostly on sequels to keep his movie stardom blazing.

In the past 12 years, Cruise has starred in four more Mission: Impossible films as well as sequels to Jack Reacher and Top Gun. He also headlined 2017’s disastrous The Mummy, which was intended to launch Universal’s Dark Universe. His only non-franchise film was 2017’s American Made, which did respectable business. But Digger was supposed to mark Cruise’s return to riskier dramatic fare, harkening back to his challenging work in films like Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut (both released in 1999). Although Cruise previously won an honorary Oscar in 2025, he likely hoped to earn his fourth acting Oscar nomination. Even those chances appear compromised following Digger’s poor box office and divisive reviews.

Marvel Might Be Able to Finally Get Tom Cruise to Hop into Tony Stark’s Iconic Armor

Digger is, in many ways, the most experimental movie of Cruise’s career. So it was admirable for him to give Ethan Hunt a rest and try something different. However, it’s easy to see a world in which the actor reverts back to the relatively safe waters of franchise filmmaking. He already has a sequel to his 1990 hit Days of Thunder in the works, clearly hoping for Top Gun: Maverick box office. But if he’s looking to earn back some audience goodwill, he could take this opportunity to give Kevin Feige a call and play a variant of Tony Stark in the MCU. With Avengers: Secret Wars potentially providing a window for glimpses into a ton of different universes before everything is combined into one universe, this looks like the perfect opportunity.

Cruise was, of course, attached to star in Iron Man in 1998 before he ultimately declined it. But ever since, fans have been eager to see the actor play a variation on the hero Robert Downey Jr. has embodied so well. With the introduction of the multiverse, some fans saw a renewed potential for Cruise to play his version of Tony Stark. But a rumored appearance as Superior Iron Man in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness never happened. However, Cruise could be more open now to making even a cameo in Avengers: Secret Wars, which might be his last chance for a while. After all, if fans could get John Krasinski as Reed Richards, why not bring Iron Man’s cinematic history full circle with Cruise in the armor?

Do you think Cruise will finally play Iron Man in the MCU? Let us know in the comments!

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