Verity box office: $32.6m No. 1 opening as Tom Cruise’s Digger stalls at $8m
The Verity box office opening came in at an estimated $32.6 million, putting Colleen Hoover’s thriller at No. 1 in North America, while Tom Cruise’s Digger stalled at about $8 million. Here are the weekend numbers, what the audience scores say, and why one opening matters far beyond its own film.
By Editorial Team
What we know
- Verity wins the weekend (REPORTED, studio estimates via Deadline). Amazon MGM Studios’ Verity took an estimated $32.6 million from 3,510 North American cinemas over 2–4 October 2026. Deadline reports it was also No. 1 worldwide with $62.5 million.
- Digger opens fifth (REPORTED). Warner Bros’ Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise, opened to about $8 million from 3,321 cinemas, with roughly $20 million worldwide. The Guardian, using Associated Press reporting, puts its international start at $12 million from 74 markets.
- A 19-year low for Cruise (REPORTED). Deadline says Digger is Cruise’s lowest opening since Lions for Lambs opened to $6.7 million in 2007.
- Matching audience grades (REPORTED). Both films received a C+ CinemaScore, according to Deadline.
- Estimates, not finals. Weekend figures are Sunday studio estimates. Final numbers usually arrive on Monday and can move slightly.
The Verity box office in context
Verity, directed by Michael Showalter, stars Dakota Johnson as a writer hired to finish a book series for an incapacitated author played by Anne Hathaway, with Josh Hartnett also in the cast. Deadline calls the $32.6 million start the second-best opening for a Hoover adaptation, behind It Ends with Us, which opened to $50 million in 2024.
The film’s audience was heavily female. Deadline cites exit polling showing a 79 per cent female turnout. It also notes Verity’s $4.5 million in previews, below the $7 million It Ends with Us earned but well ahead of the $1.9 million for this year’s Reminders of Him. The C+ CinemaScore is the lowest Hoover’s adaptations have received so far, Deadline says, after It Ends with Us earned an A- and Reminders of Him and Regretting You earned Bs.
The timing gives Johnson an unusually busy week. She hosted Saturday Night Live the night before the weekend numbers landed, where Taylor Swift crashed her monologue, as we reported in Taylor Swift crashes Dakota Johnson’s SNL monologue.
Why Digger’s opening is a bigger story than one flop
Digger cost a lot to make. Reported production budgets range from at least $125 million to more than $160 million, and the Guardian says marketing spend has been estimated at another $100 million. These are reported figures, not studio-confirmed numbers. Against that, an $8 million domestic start leaves a very large gap to close.
Deadline notes that the film’s audience skewed young and male, at 73 per cent male and 60 per cent aged 18 to 34. It also says Rotten Tomatoes showed a 51 per cent critics’ score against a 71 per cent audience score at the time of its Friday report. If you are not sure what those two numbers mean, our guide to Rotten Tomatoes scores explains the difference.
The bigger context is corporate. Digger is Warner Bros’ last release as a standalone studio before Paramount Skydance’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, which the two companies say is expected to close on 6 October. Trade reports say Warner’s film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy will not continue under the new owner. That makes Digger’s result part of a wider conversation about whether a merged studio will keep funding expensive original films by big-name directors.
The rest of the top five
Using Deadline’s Sunday chart:
- No. 2: Resident Evil (Sony), $12.5 million in its third weekend, for $124.9 million in total.
- No. 3: Heart of the Beast (Paramount), $11 million in its second weekend, down 45 per cent, for $38.3 million.
- No. 4: Primetime (A24), $8 million in its second weekend, down 57 per cent, for $34.2 million. We covered its opening in Robert Pattinson’s Primetime opens to $19.2m.
- No. 5: Digger (Warner Bros), about $8 million in its first weekend.
Further down, the Avengers: Endgame re-release fell to seventh with $4.4 million. The Guardian reports that its second week was enough for Endgame to pass Avatar again as the highest-grossing film ever without adjusting for inflation, at $2.9255 billion against Avatar’s $2.9237 billion. Our Marvel movies in order guide places Endgame in the wider series.
Overall, Deadline says the weekend was heading for about $99 million across all films, up 15 per cent on the same weekend last year, and that the 2026 domestic total stood at about $7.95 billion. For how opening weekend, domestic and worldwide totals fit together, see our box office numbers explainer.
What happens next
- Final weekend figures are due on Monday 5 October and may adjust the estimates above.
- Deadline expects the domestic year-to-date total to pass $8 billion around 9 October.
- Verity’s second-weekend drop will show whether the C+ CinemaScore hurts word of mouth.
- The Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger is set to close on 6 October, and the combined studio’s plans for Warner’s upcoming slate, including Dune: Part Three in December, will be watched closely.
More film and TV coverage: Movies & TV.
Photo credits: Featured image: Dakota Johnson, star of Verity, at Cannes in 2025. Photo: Harald Krichel, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source. In-article image: Tom Cruise at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. Photo: Jonas Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source.
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