Late '80s grind: Tom Cruise says he juggled three movies at once, working six-day weeks

During a recent chat on On Film … With Kevin McCarthy while promoting Digger, Tom Cruise dug into the most chaotic stretch of his early stardom: he was preparing Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July at the same time he was still sneaking in Cocktail pickup shots on Sundays.

At one point, Cruise was prepping two dramas while squeezing in Cocktail pickup shots on Sundays.

He described a schedule that ran six days a week and said he’d spent more than two years developing Rain Man before cameras finally rolled. The two prestige dramas ended up filming back-to-back after running in parallel for years.

The prep wasn’t light, either: Rain Man required extensive work in step with Dustin Hoffman’s character process, and Born on the Fourth of July demanded a physical transformation to play Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic. Cruise framed the grind less as punishment than as fuel — the constant motion kept him creatively lit.

Now: box-office turbulence

Cruise’s latest original bet with filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the satire Digger, has turned into a costly headache for Warner Bros. The film opened to about $8 million domestically and roughly $21 million worldwide; with a production budget reported above $160 million and around $100 million in marketing, it ’s projected to lose about $250 million, according to TheWrap, even after post-theatrical revenue is counted.

Meanwhile, Cruise’s franchise lane is locked in: Paramount has officially set a sequel to his 1990 NASCAR drama. There’s no indication the Digger shortfall pushed him toward the follow-up — Days of Thunder 2 was already moving months before that flop — but the timing underlines how different the paths look for originals and legacy titles right now.

• Release date — June 2, 2028
• Tom Cruise — returns as Cole Trickle
• Anne Hathaway — joining the cast
• Director — Jonathan Levine
• Producers — Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tommy Harper