'Verity' Leads a Sub-$100M Box Office Weekend as Tom Cruise's 'Digger' Sinks to $7.5M

Amazon MGM's Verity easily won the weekend with an estimated $32.6 million — but the bigger stories are the flop at the bottom of the chart and the $8 billion milestone now just days away.

The adaptation of Colleen Hoover's thriller, starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, opened in 3,510 locations for a per-theater average of roughly $9,293, according to industry estimates. It added $30 million from 70 international markets, giving it a $62.5 million worldwide opening — and by itself, Verity accounted for nearly one-third of all domestic ticket sales this weekend.

The $40-million-budgeted thriller is positioned to turn a modest theatrical profit for Amazon MGM and should find a second life on Prime Video. But exhibitors won't love the word of mouth: the film earned a C+ CinemaScore and sits at 34% critics / 69% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, with many of Hoover's own fans saying it lacks the creepy, steamy thrills of the source material. This one looks frontloaded.

The real carnage is at the other end of the chart. Warner Bros./Legendary's Digger — Tom Cruise's team-up with Alejandro G. Iñárritu — opened to roughly $7.5 million after grossing just $3.4 million on Friday, including $1.2 million in Thursday previews, from 3,321 locations with Imax support.

The math is brutal. The film's budget reportedly grew from $125 million to between $160 million and $180 million, putting its break-even point near $350 million. Digger is now on track to become Cruise's lowest-grossing opening weekend since 2007's Lions for Lambs ($6.7 million) — an almost unthinkable result for one of the most consistent box-office draws of the past four decades, and a rough note for the studio's final release before Paramount acquires the 103-year-old company.

The film marks Iñárritu's first English-language feature since The Revenant and Cruise's first Warner Bros. picture since 2014's Edge of Tomorrow. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a grotesque oil tycoon whose drilling accident breaks a massive section of Greenland's ice shelf toward Europe — and the film's Oscar hopes for its star, once whispered as a real awards-season angle, are now essentially dead.

The holdovers couldn't pick up the slack. Sony's Resident Evil placed second with $12.5 million in its third weekend, down 46%, while Paramount's Heart of the Beast took third with $11 million in its second weekend, down 45%. No other movie reached $10 million.

All told, the domestic marketplace generated an estimated $99 million from Friday through Sunday — down 21% from the previous weekend, up 14.8% versus the comparable frame last year — with the top 10 titles combining for about $91.6 million.

But step back and the industry picture is genuinely strong. Domestic ticket sales have reached $7.949 billion through Oct. 4, up 19.5% from $6.654 billion at the same point last year. The industry now sits just $50.8 million short of $8 billion and is projected to cross that threshold around Oct. 9, depending on weekday sales. September contributed $601.9 million, up 1.3% from a year earlier. The 2026 box-office recovery isn't a theory anymore — it's a number.