Will Moviegoers Buy Tom Cruise As A Billionaire Savior In ‘Digger’?

Tom Cruise’s next movie is a comedy about the world’s most powerful man who decides to become humanity’s savior. Even Cruise’s admirers might wonder how this character will be welcomed by Trumped-out filmgoers who might prefer more conventional “revenge” movies.

The Top Gun star has often made unexpected choices (remember Magnolia or Valkyrie?). But, with the U.S. trapped in a K-shaped economic morass, wouldn’t an angry underdog hero earn quicker support?

To what extent does “the mood of the moment” determine the fate of Hollywood product? That topic was debated at CinemaCon last week, where Cruise described his new venture Digger to a worshipful audience.

“The growing gulf between rich and poor is stirring anger and movies don’t reflect it,” comments one veteran distributor, who believes Hollywood once was adept at exploiting that mood.

Marquees in the 1960s pitched violent revenge movies like Bonnie and Clyde but also hedged with Mary Poppins.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, film audiences were flocking to gangster fare like Public Enemy, Little Caesar or Scarface – the bad guys bashing the establishment.

Produced before enactment of the Motion Picture Code, these gripping films dominated both the box office and the Oscars. While the economy later healed, “problem films” about social discord (The Grapes of Wrath) shared box office returns with MGM musicals.

Theater owners cut prices and dispensed prizes to ticket buyers as the gangsters effectively cross-pollinated with the studio dance numbers.

By the early ‘60s, however, Hollywood was discovering that their bland, non-genre movies were fading before the onslaught of TV. The 1966 Best Picture Oscar went to the popular if pedestrian Sound of Music over ambitious fare like Dr. Zhivago and Ship of Fools. Symbolically, even Elvis Presley had to turn to cheesy Westerns to keep working.

Meanwhile, the shrewdly eclectic Cruise has chosen a range of film roles that jump between genres — also between success and failure. The heroic Cruise of eight Mission: Impossibles scored more consistently than the flaky Cruise of Cocktail or Collateral.

Winning three Oscar nominations, Cruise understandably took pride in his work in Born on the Fourth of July or even Lions for Lambs, but his career didn’t become became celestial until Top Gun.

Digger announces itself as “a comedy of catastrophic proportions.” Its edginess seems guaranteed given the history of director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, whose iconoclasm was on display in Birdman and The Revenant.

Will Digger resonate amid the challenging beggar-vs.-billionaire tides of a K-economy? Would Digger himself be a welcome intruder in two weeks at a Prada reunion?