Verity Beats Cruise as Warner’s Auteur Bet Comes Due

$32.0 million put Verity at No. 1 for October 2-4, four times Tom Cruise’s start in Digger, on a $40 million budget. Amazon MGM’s Colleen Hoover thriller led from 3,510 theaters. Warner Bros. spent at least $125 million on the Alejandro G. Iñárritu satire that finished fourth with $8.0 million.

Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy’s last day as Warner film chiefs fell on October 6, the date set for the $111 billion Paramount Skydance merger to close.

Verity Took the Weekend on a $40 Million Budget

Box Office Mojo’s October 2-4 domestic weekend chart has Verity at $32,031,011, a $9,125 theater average. Thursday previews put $4.5 million in the till before Friday’s $15,004,153, then $9,990,786 on Saturday and $7,036,072 on Sunday. Overseas added about $30 million from 70 markets, for a worldwide start near $62 million, already above the $40 million production budget.

Michael Showalter directed Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett in the R-rated book thriller. Critics did not come along: Rotten Tomatoes lists 33 percent of critic reviews as fresh. Audiences still bought tickets. CinemaScore issued a C+, the weakest grade yet for a Hoover adaptation after an A- for It Ends With Us and B grades for Reminders of Him and Regretting You. PostTrak found a 50 percent definite recommend and a crowd that was 78 percent female, with 25-to-34-year-olds the largest group at 38 percent.

It Ends With Us opened at $50 million two years ago. Reminders of Him began at $17.97 million and closed at $48.55 million domestic. Verity is the second-best Hoover start, and it did that work in Dallas, Tampa, Nashville, and other cities that rarely prop up a critic-proof adult thriller. Showalter’s prior theatrical high, The Big Sick, finished at $42.8 million after a slow platform rollout. This one is already most of the way there in three days.

OCTOBER 2-4 DOMESTIC WEEKEND

Hathaway now has three No. 1 openings in 2026, after The Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada 2. The Odyssey has $1.767 billion worldwide. Prada 2 has $220.55 million domestic. Verity is the only one of those titles the Tomatometer has filed as rotten, and it still led a frame that grossed about $99 million across the market.

An $8 Million Opening Ends the De Luca and Abdy Years

Digger took $8,001,856 from 3,321 theaters, a $2,409 average, after $3,487,210 on Friday, $2,667,767 on Saturday, and $1,846,879 on Sunday. Overseas added $12 million from 74 markets, for $20 million worldwide. Iñárritu had not released a film in theaters since The Revenant in 2015, and that one was platformed. Digger went wide on day one, in old-age makeup, as an R-rated environmental satire about an oil tycoon.

CinemaScore matched Verity at C+. Critics landed at 51 percent. PostTrak’s definite recommend was 47 percent, from a crowd that was 73 percent male and 60 percent ages 18 to 34, with the coasts accounting for 48 percent of the money. IMAX contributed $2.1 million, 26.3 percent of the North American total, which is a large-format share on a tiny base. Cruise’s last original headliner, American Made in 2017, opened at $16.77 million. The last time he opened this low was 2007’s Lions for Lambs, a $35 million drama that started at $6.7 million with Cruise third-billed.

He posted through the wreckage anyway.

DIGGER is officially in theaters and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to create this film alongside such talented artists. Thank you to the entire cast and crew for your dedication, hard work, and joy. The experience was truly unforgettable and I’m so proud of what we… pic.twitter.com/3YBblCnL3E

— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) October 3, 2026

“DIGGER is officially in theaters and I am so honored to have had the opportunity to create this film alongside such talented artists,” Cruise wrote on October 3. “I’m so proud of what we created.” RelishMix had already watched online chatter slide from 8.1 out of 10 on September 15 to 6.4 before opening, with viewers unsure whether the film was satire or a bit. Warner Bros. kept it off the festival circuit, then ran “decide for yourself” ads once reviews landed.

De Luca and Abdy, who had run Warner’s motion picture group since 2022 after two years at MGM, learned they would not join David Ellison’s combined company as Digger left the gate. Paramount film heads Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are expected to oversee both studios. Abdy and De Luca have been in talks about a possible next stop at Netflix. Their Warner contracts ran through 2030 and must be paid out. Abdy’s reply to Ellison was short.

Good luck to you. I left you 39 movies.

Pamela Abdy, Warner Bros. film chief, to David Ellison

The slate they leave includes Legendary’s next Dune, a Minecraft sequel, and The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Under them the studio also released A Minecraft Movie, $960 million worldwide, and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, $370 million worldwide, plus last year’s Best Picture winner One Battle After Another. Digger is the closing title of that bet: director-driven films with studio-sized checks. Cruise, at a Digger premiere, told the pair they committed so fast he doubted they had turned a page of the script.

The Original That Was Priced Like a Tentpole

Warner Bros. stated production at $125 million. Delays pushed the real spend higher, and the film needed a worldwide gross in the hundreds of millions to get whole. It opened at 6 percent of that studio number. Film consultant David A. Gross wrote that Ellison, Greenstein, and Goldberg will now decide what kind of movies they want from Warner Bros. The loud argument around Digger is that adult originals still deserve a theatrical window. The quieter fact is that this original was priced like Mission: Impossible.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Studio number: Warner Bros. put Digger’s production at $125 million.
• Opening math: $8.0 million domestic and $20 million worldwide from 3,321 theaters.
• Audience split: C+ CinemaScore, 73 percent male, 47 percent definite recommend.
• Festival path: The studio skipped the circuit and went wide in one jump.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Final cost: Figures after delays run well above $125 million, and no audited total is out.
• Write-down: Loss estimates sit in a nine-figure range and will move with the remaining run and later windows.

Iñárritu’s earlier wide titles were rolled out slowly. Digger claimed a heavy share of showtimes and still averaged $2,409 a screen. Cruise’s lifetime theatrical total is north of $13 billion, almost all of it from stunt-driven brands. This role sat with Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut, films that were never asked to open like Top Gun: Maverick. The multiplex, asked to pay tentpole prices for a heavy satire, stayed home.

Online, the people who log every film treated Digger as the serious object and Verity as the beach read. Ticket buyers did the reverse. That split is the whole weekend: a vocal defense of the expensive original, and a $32.0 million line for the $40 million book thriller.

Hathaway’s Third No. 1 Already Has a Racing Date

The same star who opened Verity is already booked opposite Cruise. Paramount has dated a Days of Thunder follow-up for June 2, 2028, with Cruise back as Cole Trickle and Hathaway as a team owner and engineer. Jonathan Levine is set to direct a script by Will Staples, with Cruise producing alongside Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper. The 1990 original did $82.6 million domestic and $157.9 million worldwide. Hathaway has said she will start shooting in March 2027 after a break that began when Verity opened.

That booking was announced in late August, while Digger tracking was already sliding. Cruise’s next theatrical bet is not another Iñárritu original. It is a 38-year-later NASCAR sequel at the studio that is absorbing Warner Bros. Hathaway’s 2026 run, The Odyssey, Prada 2, and now Verity, is the heat that sequel is using. Dakota Johnson, whose biggest post-Fifty Shades theatrical hit had been Materialists, gets a real wide opening out of the same movie. Amazon MGM, which already released Project Hail Mary to an $80.5 million domestic opening and $684.6 million worldwide this year on a $200 million budget, now has a second theatrical title that recouped production in a weekend.

Masters of the Universe, Amazon’s other 2026 swing, had flopped against a $200 million budget. Verity is the cheap correction: an R-rated Hoover novel, a hot lead, and a spend that a $32.0 million Friday-to-Sunday can actually cover. The C+ and the 33 percent critic score suggest the second weekend will not look like It Ends With Us. They do not undo the opening.

Resident Evil Still Carries September

Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil added $12,618,839, down 45.2 percent, and has $125,013,734 after 17 days, with more than $245 million worldwide. Heart of the Beast, Brad Pitt’s survival film, held at $10,876,713, down 45.7 percent, for $38,275,824 after 10 days. That $82 million production is at $98 million worldwide and is running like a mid-range adult thriller, not a breakout.

A24’s Primetime, after a strong Thursday preview last week, dropped 57.5 percent to $8,000,085 and has $34,085,832 in 10 days. That is a hair behind Digger for the weekend and still among A24’s better domestic runs, in the same band as The Drama earlier this year. Forgotten Island, Universal and DreamWorks’ animated miss, did $7,201,655, down 44.6 percent, for $23,632,855 domestic.

THE HOLDOVER BOARD

• Endgame encore: The 2026 reissue fell 82.9 percent to $4,471,524 and has $36,298,509 in 10 days as its own release, not an add-on to the 2019 total.
• Practical Magic 2: The Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman reunion added $2,785,993 in weekend four and has $64,827,319 domestic on a $75 million budget.
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day took $2,501,553 and stands at $954,528,523 domestic.
• The Odyssey: Nolan’s film added $1,298,085, has $620,461,595 domestic, and sits at $1.767 billion worldwide.

Lionsgate’s Beware Boiúna opened to $550,546 in 1,121 theaters. Warner’s 2026 domestic list still has no title over $100 million, a streak the studio itself has called a twelve-film run of sub-$100 million releases once Digger is counted. Clayface is next on that calendar. Jessica Chastain’s Other Mommy, which is not screening for press, is tracking as a possible $35 million horror open for Universal. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is tracking in the low single digits.

What Skydance Inherits on Day One

Ellison’s combined company is named Skydance, with a deal requirement to release 30 films a year. Ynon Kreiz is coming in as co-CEO. Cindy Holland is out of the streaming job, with HBO’s Casey Bloys expected to run that side. The first theatrical problem already in the building is a $125 million satire playing to empty IMAX auditoriums. The first theatrical proof that adult tickets still sell is across town at Amazon MGM, priced at $40 million.

THE WEEK THE STUDIO CHANGED HANDS

1. October 2, 2026: De Luca and Abdy’s exit becomes public. Verity and Digger open. Verity does $15,004,153 on Friday. Digger does $3,487,210.
2. October 3, 2026: CinemaScore posts C+ for both films. Cruise thanks the Digger cast and crew in public while Sunday tracking sits on an $8 million weekend.
3. October 4, 2026: The weekend closes with Verity at $32,031,011 and Digger at $8,001,856.
4. October 6, 2026: The $111 billion merger is set to close. De Luca and Abdy’s last day. Goldberg and Greenstein take the film keys.

Domestic 2026 through October 4 is about $7.95 billion, with the year likely to cross $8 billion around October 9. That does not change the invoice on Digger. Other Mommy, The Social Reckoning, and Clayface will tell whether the new owners keep writing checks the size of Iñárritu’s last swing, or whether they price the next original closer to Verity. Cruise and Hathaway already have a June 2, 2028 date at Paramount either way.