Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson’s Verity is emerging as the clear winner of the October 2-4 weekend at the North American box office, while Tom Cruise is facing one of the weakest theatrical debuts of his modern career.
Amazon MGM Studios’ adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling psychological thriller is currently projected to open with roughly $32 million domestically. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, despite Cruise’s star power and a considerably larger production investment, is heading toward only about $10 million.
The numbers remain weekend estimates rather than final grosses, so Saturday and Sunday business can still move both totals. But the early gap is already substantial: Verity is currently positioned to open at more than three times Digger’s projected haul.
For Cruise, a $10 million finish would also carry an uncomfortable historical distinction. It would be his weakest domestic opening in 19 years, dating back to 2007’s Lions for Lambs, which debuted with approximately $6.7 million.
‘Verity’ turned strong previews into a $32 million weekend
Verity entered Friday with the advantage.
The Michael Showalter-directed thriller earned $4.5 million from previews, considerably ahead of Digger’s approximately $1.2 million preview haul. Current estimates then put Verity at roughly $14.5 million for Friday including previews, setting up the projected $32 million weekend.
That is a healthy start for a film whose appeal is significantly different from the franchise-heavy titles that usually dominate big openings.
The movie stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to complete bestselling author Verity Crawford’s book series after Verity, played by Hathaway, becomes incapacitated. Josh Hartnett plays Verity’s husband Jeremy, whose relationship with Lowen complicates an already increasingly disturbing situation.
The biggest commercial advantage may simply be that audiences already know what Verity is.
Hoover’s novel comes with an enormous built-in readership, while the trailers have sold the adaptation clearly as an erotic psychological thriller involving sex, secrets and potentially unreliable versions of the truth.
Even mixed critical reception does not appear to have prevented that audience from showing up.
‘Digger’ is a much tougher sell than a typical Tom Cruise movie
Digger has almost the opposite commercial profile.
Iñárritu’s film stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, a wealthy oil executive whose actions contribute to an environmental catastrophe. Instead of playing the highly competent action hero audiences associate with Top Gun: Maverick or Mission: Impossible, Cruise is buried beneath prosthetics and playing an exaggerated, morally compromised figure inside a surreal climate satire.
It is an intentionally unusual movie.
That creative ambition is also making it harder to market.
Friday estimates put Digger at around $4 million including previews, with Deadline currently projecting approximately $10 million for the full weekend.
The number looks particularly difficult against the film’s reported cost. Estimates vary, but reporting has placed Digger’s production budget as high as $160 million to $180 million after costs increased during production.
A $10 million domestic launch does not automatically determine the film’s ultimate fate — international markets, awards attention and long-term theatrical play still matter — but it creates an extremely difficult starting point for something made at that scale.
Why the 19-year Tom Cruise comparison needs context
Calling this Cruise’s “lowest opening in 19 years” is technically striking, but there is some useful context behind the statistic.
Cruise has spent much of that period working almost exclusively on large-scale event movies.
Mission: Impossible, Top Gun: Maverick, The Mummy, Jack Reacher and Edge of Tomorrow were all designed around recognizable action hooks, established intellectual property or both.
Digger is neither.
It is an original, adult-oriented black comedy from the filmmaker behind Birdman and The Revenant. Its marketing has also intentionally hidden some of its stranger narrative turns, meaning audiences have been asked to buy tickets largely on Cruise and Iñárritu’s names.
That makes direct comparisons with Mission: Impossible less useful.
Still, Cruise’s name has historically been strong enough to open unfamiliar material. A roughly $10 million weekend suggests that star power alone was not enough to overcome Digger’s unconventional premise and divided reviews.
‘Verity’ and ‘Digger’ show two very different versions of star power
The weekend creates an interesting reversal.
Cruise is unquestionably the larger traditional movie star, yet Verity arrives with something Digger does not have: a recognizable story with an existing fanbase.
That does not mean Hathaway and Johnson are irrelevant to its success. Hathaway’s performance as Verity has been one of the adaptation’s biggest promotional selling points, while Johnson and Hartnett give the film an unusually recognizable trio for an adult thriller.
But Verity is selling property plus stars.
Digger is largely selling filmmaker plus star.
In the current theatrical market, the first equation appears to be winning this weekend by a wide margin.
There is also some irony ahead. Hathaway and Cruise are expected to work together on the developing Days of Thunder 2, making the two actors likely future co-stars even as their current movies land on opposite sides of the box-office conversation.
Final numbers could still move
These are not yet final weekend totals.
The $32 million figure for Verity and $10 million projection for Digger are current industry estimates as of Saturday, October 3. Strong Saturday-night attendance or weaker-than-expected Sunday business could shift both results before final figures arrive Monday.
But unless there is an unusually dramatic change, the headline is already clear.
Verity has converted Colleen Hoover’s readership and a star-heavy cast into a solid theatrical opening.
Digger, meanwhile, has discovered the limits of even Tom Cruise’s box-office reliability when the movie itself is an expensive, strange and difficult-to-summarize original.
For Cruise, the more important question now is not whether Digger can catch Verity. At the current pace, it cannot.
It is whether international audiences and longer-term word of mouth can prevent one of the boldest swings of his recent career from also becoming one of its biggest commercial disappointments.
