If anyone had predicted this result a month ago, they would have been laughed out of every Hollywood trade meeting. Tom Cruise, one of the last guaranteed box office stars on the planet, just had his new film beaten by a mid budget thriller based on a Colleen Hoover novel. Welcome to the strangest box office weekend of 2026.
Amazon MGM’s Verity, starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, stormed to number one at the North American box office with an estimated $33.6 million opening weekend. Warner Bros.’ Digger, the dark satire starring Tom Cruise and directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, limped into fifth place with roughly $8 million. The margin is brutal, and the story behind it is even more interesting.
The Weekend Numbers Tell a Wild Story
Verity opened in 3,510 theaters on October 2, 2026. It pulled in $15.1 million on Friday alone, including $4.5 million from Thursday previews. That Friday number beat recent openers like Practical Magic 2 ($13.1 million) and The Lost City ($11.5 million). Among Colleen Hoover adaptations, only It Ends With Us posted a bigger Friday with $24.2 million.
Digger, meanwhile, managed just $3.4 million on Friday from 3,321 locations, including Imax screens. For a film that reportedly cost at least $125 million, with some reports putting the budget at $160 million or higher, that is a painful start. Trade analysts called it the worst opening for a Tom Cruise film since Lions for Lambs back in 2007.
The full top five, according to Sunday estimates:
- Verity — $33.6 million
- Resident Evil — $12.5 million (third weekend)
- Heart of the Beast — $11 million (Brad Pitt’s second weekend)
- Primetime — $8.5 million
- Digger — $8 million
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Why Verity Won the Weekend
The answer is one word: Hoover. Colleen Hoover has one of the most loyal fan bases in publishing, and those readers showed up in force. Verity is based on her bestselling thriller about struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), who takes a ghostwriting job for acclaimed author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and uncovers unsettling secrets hidden inside unpublished manuscripts. It is obsessed readers, buried secrets and psychological unease, exactly the mix that built Hoover’s empire.
Her previous adaptations proved the pattern. It Ends With Us became a genuine box office phenomenon, and Reminders of Him and Regretting You kept the streak alive. The audience arrived at the theater before the reviews even mattered. For Amazon MGM, a $33.6 million debut on a reported $40 million budget means the film is already on track for a comfortable theatrical profit, with a Prime Video afterlife still to come.
There is a warning sign, though. Verity earned a C+ CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, and critics were even colder, with the film sitting at 34 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Front loaded openings like this often drop steeply in week two, so the studio will be watching the second weekend hold closely.
What Went Wrong for Tom Cruise and Digger
Digger is a dark satire in which Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an aging oil tycoon who tries to convince the world that only he can save everyone from a climate catastrophe his own drilling operation created. The cast is genuinely stacked: Riz Ahmed, Sandra Huller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Robert John Burke and Emma D’Arcy. Reviews were split down the middle, with some critics calling it courageous and audacious, and others dismissing it as a full misfire.
But here is the problem. Audiences know exactly what they want from a Tom Cruise movie in 2026: jets, stunts, and Cruise sprinting at full speed. A talky environmental satire is the opposite of that promise. As box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian told The Hollywood Reporter, expectations have to be set around what the movie actually is, not what the name Tom Cruise normally delivers.
The timing made it worse. Digger is the final release from Warner Bros. as a standalone studio before the expected finalization of the Paramount Skydance merger with the company. Studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are on their way out, with new leadership arriving. Marketing campaigns run on confidence, and a studio in the middle of a corporate handover rarely sells a difficult movie well.
Cruise’s recent career has been defined by action franchises, and fans clearly expected more of the same. He is expected to begin filming the Days of Thunder sequel soon, and that movie cannot arrive fast enough for everyone involved.
The Irony Nobody Missed
Here is the twist that makes this weekend so delicious: both films earned the exact same audience grade, a C+ CinemaScore. Moviegoers liked neither picture much more than the other. The entire difference is about expectations and budgets. Verity cost $40 million and opened at $33.6 million, so it is already a win. Digger cost $125 to $160 million and opened at $8 million, so it is a disaster, even though audiences graded them identically.
There is a second twist. Verity was directed by Michael Showalter, the comedy director behind The Big Sick. Digger was directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, a two time Oscar winner for Birdman and The Revenant. On paper, Digger was the prestige bet and Verity the long shot. The box office flipped the script completely.
What Comes Next
Verity will ride its momentum into spooky season, with Halloween themed marketing practically writing itself. Dakota Johnson just scored her biggest domestic debut since Fifty Shades Freed in 2018, and Anne Hathaway notched yet another number one opening in a career full of them. For the two stars, this weekend is pure gold.
For Cruise, the lesson is uncomfortable but clear. Audiences still adore him, but they adore him doing Tom Cruise things. One flop does not end a career, especially not his, but Digger will go down as a reminder that even the biggest star cannot sell a movie the audience never asked for.
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