Verity Heads for About $33 Million While Digger Sinks to $7.5 Million, Tom Cruise's Lowest Opening Since 2007, Per TheWrap

The first weekend of October has two new wide releases and two very different stories. Verity is winning the weekend. Digger is not close, and the gap between what it cost and what it is earning is the part of this weekend that people will be talking about on Monday.

First, the caveat, and I want it clear. It is Sunday, October 4, and every weekend figure in this post is a Saturday studio estimate or projection. Actuals publish Monday, and numbers can move between estimate and actual. Nothing below is final.

This post is about the money and the audience reaction. If you want the critics' side, the site already covered both films.

RelatedVerity Review Roundup: Critics Call It Too Safe, the Popcornmeter Says Otherwise, and Tracking Points to a Solid Hoover Opening

The Estimates, Outlet by Outlet

Different outlets are carrying slightly different numbers, and I am not going to blend them into one figure. Here is what each reported on Saturday.

• TheWrap: Verity at $33 million, Digger at $7.5 million.
• Dark Horizons: Verity at $32 million, Digger at $8 million.
• Hollywood Outbreak: Verity at an estimated $33.6 million, Digger at an estimated $7.5 million.

So the honest summary is that Verity is looking at roughly $32 million to $33.6 million, and Digger at $7.5 million to $8 million. Either way, using Dark Horizons' own figures, Verity is earning about four times what Digger is.

TheWrap adds that the overall weekend is up 17% from last year, helped by September holdovers and about $40 million combined from the two newcomers. The market is in decent shape, and as the numbers below show, most of that $40 million is coming from one of the two newcomers.

Verity: A Clear Win, a Little Under the Projections

TheWrap reports Verity, from Amazon MGM, took in $15 million on Friday from 3,510 locations and is headed for a $33 million opening weekend. That is first place by a wide margin.

It is also a hair below where the pre-weekend conversation had it. In our earlier Verity post, Koimoi had projected $35 million to $40 million, and a Boxoffice Pro and Box Office Report forecast had pointed to about $34.9 million from 3,510 theaters. Every estimate above lands under the low end of Koimoi's range. The same earlier post noted tracking at $25 million to $35 million, and the Saturday estimates sit inside that older, lower range.

That is not a bad result. TheWrap reports a $40 million budget for the film and says it will turn a modest theatrical profit for Amazon MGM, with likely streaming attention on Prime Video afterward. A decent theatrical opening followed by a streaming life is a reasonable outcome on those terms. I would call this a solid result with a ceiling, not a breakout.

The Frontloading Question

TheWrap calls the film likely frontloaded, meaning a large share of its total arrives early and then drops. Our own arithmetic points the same way, loosely: $15 million on Friday out of a $33 million weekend means Friday accounts for roughly 45% of the estimate. That is my division, not a figure from any outlet, and a Friday share alone proves little. But a book-driven film where the most committed fans show up first is the classic setup for a steep second-weekend drop, and the audience data below does not argue against it.

Digger: A Small Number Against a Large Budget

Digger, the Warner Bros. and Legendary release directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, took $3.4 million on Friday from 3,321 locations, including Imax, according to TheWrap. TheWrap has it falling to a $7.5 million opening weekend. Dark Horizons has a slightly higher $8 million and says the film is likely to finish fifth.

The budget is where the story gets uncomfortable. TheWrap says the film cost "at least $125 million, with some reports putting it at $160 million or higher." I am not going to pick one of those numbers, because the range is itself the point: nobody outside the studio has pinned the cost down publicly. Even against the low end of TheWrap's range, a $7.5 million domestic opening is about 6% of the budget by my math. That is one weekend in one market, and I am deliberately not covering worldwide figures or break-even estimates.

TheWrap's subhead puts the historical context in a single line: "Warner Bros.' final film before Paramount's takeover is Tom Cruise's lowest opening weekend since 2007." TheWrap identifies the 2007 film as Lions for Lambs. That is TheWrap's claim, and it is a notable one. By that account, this opening, if the estimates hold, would be his weakest in 19 years.

TheWrap also notes that the film has Oscar hopes for Cruise. That is the outlet's framing, and the opening does not rule it out, since awards campaigns run on a different clock than box office. But it does mean the film's commercial and awards stories are now pulling in opposite directions.

RelatedDigger Review Roundup: Critics Agree Tom Cruise Is Doing Something Real, They're Not Sold the Movie Around Him Earns It

What Audiences Said: Two C+ CinemaScores

This is the part of the weekend that is genuinely surprising, because the two films have almost nothing in common and got the same grade. According to TheWrap, both Verity and Digger earned a C+ CinemaScore. CinemaScore is a poll of opening-night audiences, so it tracks the people who showed up on day one, not the general public.

Dark Horizons goes further on one of them, calling Verity's C+ the worst CinemaScore to date for a Colleen Hoover adaptation. That is Dark Horizons' characterization, and I have not checked it against a full list of grades.

Rotten Tomatoes audience scores, as reported by TheWrap, tell a slightly different story:

• Verity: 34% critics, 69% audience.
• Digger: 51% critics, 71% audience.

For context, our earlier posts cited a 71% audience score for Verity and a 54% critic score for Digger before the weekend. Those scores move constantly, which is why I am treating TheWrap's Saturday numbers as the current snapshot and not as settled. The one thing worth noticing is that Digger's audience score is a couple of points above Verity's despite a much weaker commercial showing. That suggests the people who did see it did not hate it. The problem is that so few of them showed up.

Why Hoover's Readers Seem Cooler

TheWrap says fans of Hoover's book in the early CinemaScore audience seem to find the film lacks the creepy, steamy thrills of the source material. That is TheWrap's read of the audience reaction, not a poll result. If it is right, the readers who showed up first are the ones most likely to be disappointed, and a C+ from that core group is a reason for caution about the second weekend, even with a win in hand.

TheWrap also compares Digger's reception to Paramount's Babylon, which made $65.2 million worldwide. That is TheWrap's comparison and not mine. It frames Digger as a big, ambitious, divisive studio swing with an audience that does not match the budget.

The Rest of the Weekend

The holdovers show how crowded the market is. These figures come from TheWrap, with Dark Horizons' differing numbers noted where I have them.

• Resident Evil (Sony): $12.5 million in its third weekend, for a $125 million domestic total. Dark Horizons has $12 million and a $124.3 million total.
• Heart of the Beast (Paramount): $11 million in its second weekend after a $20 million opening, for a $38.3 million domestic total. TheWrap says it "faces an uphill climb to profitability."
• Primetime (A24): down 56% from a $19 million opening to $8 million, for a $34 million domestic total against a $15 million budget.
• Forgotten Island (Universal/DreamWorks): down 50% from a $13 million opening to $6.6 million, for a $23 million domestic total against an $80 million budget.

Place Digger in that list at $7.5 million and, among the films TheWrap names, it falls below Resident Evil, Heart of the Beast and Primetime, ahead of Forgotten Island. That matches Dark Horizons' read that it is headed for fifth. A film TheWrap says cost at least $125 million is opening in the middle of a pack of holdovers, which is not where a Cruise release would normally be expected to land.

Budget is what separates a soft hold from a problem here. Primetime's $34 million against $15 million is a more comfortable spot than Forgotten Island's $23 million against $80 million.

RelatedPrimetime Review Roundup: Robert Pattinson's Chris Hansen Turn Is the Consensus Pick, the Movie Around Him Less So

A Studio Changing Hands

TheWrap emphasizes that Digger is the final Warner Bros. film before Paramount acquires the 103-year-old studio. That adds a layer to the number that has nothing to do with the film. A weak opening for a Cruise vehicle is one kind of headline. A weak opening for what TheWrap calls the last Warner Bros. release before a takeover is a different one, and expect it to be written about both ways.

I would be careful with that framing, though. The takeover is a corporate fact and the opening is a box office fact, and the two are not connected causally. What the timing does is make it a bookend, and bookends tend to get read as symbols whether or not they are.

What to Watch Next

Three things matter once the real numbers arrive.

1. Monday's actuals. Estimates get replaced by reported figures. If the newcomers' combined total moves much from the roughly $40 million TheWrap cited, the comparison with last year moves too.
2. The Verity drop. A C+ and TheWrap's frontloading call point to a notable fall. The second weekend will show whether $33 million was the peak or the start of a longer run.
3. The Digger hold. With a 71% audience score and a C+, the question is whether word of mouth builds anything or the film simply loses screens.

My read, with the caveat that these are estimates: Verity is winning the weekend, but slightly under the projections, with a $40 million budget it can plausibly cover. Digger is opening at a fraction of what TheWrap's budget range would call for, and its opening is the number likely to be quoted in the coming weeks.