Warner Bros.’ environmental thriller Digger suffered a disastrous $8 million domestic opening weekend, handing actor Tom Cruise one of the lowest debuts of his career. Meanwhile, Amazon MGM Studios claimed the No. 1 spot at the box office with the Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, which pulled in $32.6 million in its opening days.
The weekend box office delivered a sharp contrast between two high-profile releases as studios manage a turbulent period in Hollywood. While Digger struggled to find an audience, Colleen Hoover’s literary adaptations continued a powerful theatrical streak.
Verity Claims the Box Office Crown With a $32.6 Million Debut
The Hooververse expanded significantly over the weekend as Verity debuted at No. 1 in North American theaters. The psychological thriller features Anne Hathaway starring as the reclusive author Verity Crawford, who is unable to finish her latest novel after an accident. She and her husband, played by Josh Hartnett, hire Lowen Ashleigh, played by Dakota Johnson, to finish Verity’s manuscript, leading her into a tangled web of mystery and lies.
Produced for $40 million, the Amazon MGM thriller made $4.5 million in previews and grossed over $62 million worldwide over the weekend. It marked Hathaway’s third No. 1 movie following The Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada 2. The release follows a recent string of adaptations of Hoover’s novels, including 2024’s It Ends With Us, 2025’s Regretting You, and Reminders of Him from earlier in the year. It Ends With Us stands as the largest of the group with a $50 million opening and a $350 million global haul, while Verity sits behind it, surpassing Reminders of Him, which opened with $17 million, and Regretting You, which collected $13.6 million.
Digger Struggles With an $8 Million Opening and Mixed Critical Reception
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu — who has not had a film in theaters since his Oscar-winning The Revenant in 2015 — the original environmental thriller stars Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon who must save the planet from a climate catastrophe.
Digger is an original film, as Tom Cruise has not made a motion picture that was not a sequel since 2017’s American Made. The film was produced on a budget ranging from $125 million to $160 million or more. To help sell Digger, Cruise pulled out all the stops, including granting his first lengthy magazine interview in years. Despite promotional efforts, the film brought in soft figures with $1.2 million in previews and an opening that places it as the lowest debut for Cruise since the much cheaper Lions for Lambs opened to $6.7 million in 2007 on a $35 million production cost. Seven of Cruise’s top ten openings ever were Mission: Impossible films, with Top Gun: Maverick being the highest. With a career spanning five decades, Digger marks the lowest opening weekend Cruise has had as a headliner since Rain Man brought in $7 million in 1988, where he was second-billed to Dustin Hoffman. In total, 21 films featuring Cruise as a headliner have grossed over $100 million, including three for Warner Bros. with Interview with the Vampire, Edge of Tomorrow, and The Last Samurai.
“Digger” collapsed this weekend and the new management of the combined Paramount and Warner Bros., David Ellison and Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, will soon decide what kind of movies they want from WB.
David A. Gross, film consultant
Leadership Changes Loom as the Paramount and Warner Bros. Merger Closes
In a flush year for Hollywood, Warner Bros. failed to get a single film to $100 million domestically, though its December release, Dune: Part III, is expected to easily cross that milestone. For now, the studio concludes its time as a standalone entity marked by the difficult box-office reality of Digger.
Elsewhere at the box office, Sony’s third weekend of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil took second place with $12.5 million, bringing its running cume to $124.8 million, while Heart of the Beast brought in $11 million for a ten-day cume of $38.0 million.