Digger Bombs as Verity Wins: 11 Box Office Takeaways From Tom Cruise’s Worst Opening Since 2007

By the Filmoria News Desk

Tom Cruise’s Digger opened to just $8 million in North America over the weekend of 2–4 October 2026, his lowest opening since Lions for Lambs in 2007, while Amazon MGM’s Colleen Hoover thriller Verity took No. 1 with $32.6 million. Both films opened in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday 2 October 2026, and Digger is also playing in IMAX. Worldwide, Digger managed about $20 million against a production budget reported at $125 million or more, while Verity reached $62.6 million on a $40 million budget.

Quick Facts

• Weekend: Friday 2 to Sunday 4 October 2026 (North American studio estimates)
• No. 1: Verity (Amazon MGM Studios), $32.6 million from 3,510 cinemas; $30 million international; $62.6 million global
• The flop: Digger (Warner Bros.), $8 million from about 3,300 cinemas; $12 million from 74 international markets
• Digger’s budget: at least $125 million, with reports ranging up to $180 million, plus an estimated $100 million on marketing
• Audience grades: C+ CinemaScore for Digger, which sits at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes
• Record set: Cruise’s weakest opening in 19 years, below everything since Lions for Lambs ($6.7 million, 2007)
• Milestone: Spider-Man: Brand New Day reached $954 million domestic in its tenth weekend

In the UK

• UK release: Verity and Digger both opened in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday 2 October 2026; Digger is showing in IMAX as well as standard screens.
• UK distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures for Digger; Verity is an Amazon MGM Studios release.
• UK weekend figures for 2–4 October: not yet confirmed for the UK. Comscore’s UK and Ireland numbers usually land on Monday or Tuesday.
• BBFC ratings: not yet confirmed for the UK in the sources we checked. In the US, Verity is rated R.
• Royal premiere: Digger was the Royal Film Performance, with its world premiere in Leicester Square on 22 September 2026.

UK and Ireland Box Office: Weekend of 25–27 September 2026

Source: Comscore figures, as reported by Screen Daily. This is the latest complete UK weekend; figures for 2–4 October, the opening weekend of Verity and Digger, haven’t been published yet. Across the whole of September 2026, UK and Ireland takings were £73.3m, up 3% on September 2025 (£71.2m), with Resident Evil the month’s top film on £9.9m.

This is a ranked list of the 11 biggest takeaways from the North American box office weekend of 2–4 October 2026, when Verity opened at No. 1 and Tom Cruise’s Digger flopped.

The takeaways are ordered by how much each one tells us about the business: the headline flop and its money first, then the winner, then the studios, holdovers and records, finishing with what it all means for UK cinemas. Every figure comes from studio estimates reported by Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, the Associated Press and Screen Daily, and will shift slightly when Monday’s actuals arrive.

1. Digger’s $8 Million Opening (2026, US, Warner Bros.)

What makes it stand out: It’s the smallest opening for a Tom Cruise lead role in nearly two decades, and it came from a film carrying a blockbuster budget.

Key data: $8 million from roughly 3,300 North American cinemas over 2–4 October 2026, below Warner Bros.’ own $12–15 million forecast and the lowest Cruise start since Lions for Lambs took $6.7 million in November 2007.

Why it matters: Cruise has been the most dependable star in Hollywood for forty years, and this is the clearest sign yet that his name alone can’t open a film audiences don’t understand.

Put the number next to his recent run and it looks even stranger. Top Gun: Maverick opened to $126.7 million over three days in 2022. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning took $64 million over its first three days in May 2025. Even the films people now treat as misfires opened far higher: The Mummy made $31.7 million in 2017, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back $22.9 million in 2016 and American Made $16.8 million later in 2017.

Digger didn’t come close to any of those. That’s partly because it isn’t the kind of film Cruise usually sells. It’s an Alejandro G. Iñárritu black comedy about an oil tycoon, Digger Rockwell, who causes a disaster and then tries to convince the world he’s the man to save it. It’s a satire, and satire is a hard sell at the multiplex.

The comparison with Lions for Lambs is a little unfair, mind you. That Robert Redford political drama cost a fraction of this one. The headline is the number, but the real problem is the number set against what was spent, which is where we go next.

2. A $125–180 Million Bet With a $20 Million Global Start (Warner Bros. / Legendary)

What makes it stand out: The international audience didn’t rescue it either, so there’s no overseas cushion to point to.

Key data: $12 million from 74 international markets for a global opening of about $20 million; Variety puts the budget at $125 million, other reports at $130–180 million, and the AP estimates marketing at roughly another $100 million.

Why it matters: On those figures, Digger is heading for one of the year’s biggest write-downs, and it lands on Warner Bros.’ books at the worst possible moment.

There isn’t one agreed budget figure. Variety reported $125 million. Other outlets have put it at $130 million. Further trade reporting says costs climbed towards $150 million, and some accounts go as high as $180 million. Even the lowest number is a lot for a satire without a franchise attached.

The usual rule of thumb says a film needs to gross somewhere between two and two-and-a-half times its production budget worldwide to break even once cinemas take their share and marketing is paid for. For Digger, that means $250 million at the very least. A $20 million global opening, with a C+ audience grade, doesn’t put that anywhere in view.

You can see where the money went. Iñárritu shot it on 35mm VistaVision with his regular cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. The supporting cast includes Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons. Cosmo Sheldrake did the score. We covered the trailer back in September in Digger Trailer: Tom Cruise Plays an Oil Tycoon, and it looked expensive then. It looks more expensive now.

3. How the Tracking Fell Apart (C+ CinemaScore, 51% on Rotten Tomatoes)

What makes it stand out: Early tracking pointed to something near a $30 million opening, and the final number came in at about a quarter of that.

Key data: Third-party tracking first suggested close to $30 million; by 30 September Forbes reported projections had dropped sharply, the studio went into the weekend expecting $12–15 million, and the result was $8 million with a C+ CinemaScore and 51% from critics.

Why it matters: A collapse this fast, in the ten days before release, usually means reviews and early chatter turned audiences off before the film opened.

The decline happened in public. Interest looked healthy during the summer, helped by a World Cup teaser and a high-profile trailer push. Then reviews arrived, split down the middle. The AP summed up the critics’ view as a strained climate-change farce, though Cruise’s big, broad performance got warmer notices than the film around it.

The C+ CinemaScore is the more worrying number for Warner Bros. CinemaScore polls people who actually bought a ticket on opening night, the audience most likely to like the film. A C+ from them suggests word of mouth will be poor, and that the second weekend could drop hard. Reports describe it as one of the lowest grades of Cruise’s career.

Friday told the story early. Mendelson’s Friday report had Verity on top with about $15 million while Digger was already being written up as a flop. By Saturday, TheWrap had Digger tracking towards $7.5 million. The final estimate settled a little higher at $8 million.

4. Verity Opens at No. 1 With $32.6 Million (2026, US, Amazon MGM Studios)

What makes it stand out: A $40 million R-rated adaptation outgrossed Tom Cruise’s film four to one on the same weekend.

Key data: $32.6 million from 3,510 cinemas, plus $30 million international for a $62.6 million global start, on a reported $40 million budget; directed by Michael Showalter and starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett.

Why it matters: It’s another win for Amazon MGM’s theatrical push, and it’s already earned more than its production cost worldwide in three days.

Verity is the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s self-published 2018 thriller. Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish the books of bestselling author Verity Crawford (Hathaway), who’s been left unable to work after an accident. Lowen moves into the Crawford house with Verity’s husband Jeremy (Hartnett) and finds something she shouldn’t.

The opening had been building for a while. Variety’s preview pegged it at around $35 million. Thursday previews were above $4 million, according to Koimoi, which was a strong start for a non-franchise thriller. It ended slightly below that $35 million projection, but comfortably on top.

Reviews were not kind, and the C+ CinemaScore reported by several outlets suggests audiences were split too. That matters less here than it does for Digger. At $40 million, Verity only needs a modest run to be profitable, and books-to-screen audiences have shown they’ll turn up regardless of the critics.

It’s also worth noting what Amazon MGM is building. This is a studio that spent years sending its films straight to Prime Video. A $62.6 million global opening for a mid-budget thriller is the kind of theatrical result that keeps that strategy going.

5. Colleen Hoover’s Box Office Ladder (2024–2026, Four Adaptations)

What makes it stand out: Verity is the second-best Hoover opening so far, sitting between the breakout hit and the smaller follow-ups.

Key data: It Ends With Us opened to $50 million in August 2024; Regretting You to $13.6 million in 2025; Reminders of Him to $17.9 million in 2026; Verity to $32.6 million.

Why it matters: It shows Hoover’s name can still open a film, as long as the source book is one of her big ones and the cast is starrier.

After It Ends With Us, every studio wanted a Hoover book. The two films that followed it did fine for their budgets, but neither opened above $18 million, and there was a sense that the 2024 hit had been a one-off powered by BookTok and a very online marketing campaign.

Verity answers that. It isn’t a romance like the others; it’s a gothic psychological thriller with a famously divisive ending, and that has given it a slightly different audience. Yahoo’s coverage even pointed out that a Minecraft meme helped push it in the week before release, which is the sort of odd, internet-driven bump these adaptations seem to live on.

The gap to It Ends With Us is still real, about $17 million. But Verity has nearly doubled the openings of the two most recent Hoover films, and that will be the comparison studios look at when they decide which of her other books to option next.

6. Anne Hathaway’s Fourth $20 Million Opener of 2026

What makes it stand out: Hathaway has now appeared in four films that opened above $20 million in a single calendar year.

Key data: The Devil Wears Prada 2 (opened to $77 million in the US and $233.6 million worldwide in May), The Odyssey, The End of Oak Street and now Verity; Devil Wears Prada 2 went on to $693.2 million worldwide on a $100 million budget.

Why it matters: On a weekend when a veteran star’s pull came into question, another star’s year got even better.

Collider called her the box office queen of 2026, and it’s hard to argue. The headline is The Devil Wears Prada 2, which opened almost three times higher than the 2006 original’s $27.5 million. But Hathaway has also been part of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which crossed $1 billion internationally (see our breakdown of that milestone), and David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street.

What’s interesting is how different those four films are. A comedy sequel, a Nolan epic, a David Robert Mitchell mystery and now a twisty psychological thriller. That spread suggests audiences are following her across genres, which is exactly what used to be said about Cruise.

She’s not done yet, either. Mother Mary came out earlier in the year, making Verity her fifth release of 2026. It’s rare for any actor to have that many films in cinemas in one year and see most of them work.

7. A Bitter Farewell for Warner Bros. Before the Paramount Merger

What makes it stand out: The AP framed Digger as Warner Bros.’ last big swing as a standalone studio before it becomes part of Paramount.

Key data: Paramount agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery at $31.00 a share in cash in a deal valued at around $110 billion; WBD shareholders approved it and the US Department of Justice has cleared it.

Why it matters: The incoming owners inherit a $100 million-plus flop just as they decide what kind of films the combined studio should make.

It’s an awkward ending. Warner Bros. had a strong run through 2025 and into 2026 by backing filmmakers with original ideas, including Zach Cregger’s Weapons. Digger was the same bet at a far higher price: an Oscar-winning auteur, a giant star, an original story.

When those bets work, studio heads look like geniuses. When one fails this publicly, it hands ammunition to anyone arguing that the merged company should stick to franchises. Paramount itself is having a better weekend, for what it’s worth: its Brad Pitt thriller Heart of the Beast held at No. 3.

The merger paperwork set 30 September 2026 as the date after which WBD shareholders would start receiving a ticking fee if the deal hadn’t closed. That’s already passed, which tells you how close the two companies are to becoming one. Digger will be on the combined company’s books either way.

8. Resident Evil Passes $245 Million Worldwide (2026, Sony)

What makes it stand out: Zach Cregger’s reboot held at No. 2 in its third weekend and has now passed $120 million at home.

Key data: $12.5 million this weekend, a domestic total of $124.9 million, another $16.6 million overseas and a global total of $245 million, on a reported $75 million budget.

Why it matters: It’s the clearest proof this autumn that a well-reviewed mid-budget film can beat an expensive star vehicle by a mile.

Two weeks ago we wrote about the reboot’s $60.2 million record opening in 10 Box Office Takeaways From Zach Cregger’s Record Reboot. We said then that a $150 million domestic run looked realistic if the film held well. At $124.9 million after three weekends, it’s on course.

The international side has caught up too. In the UK and Ireland, it opened at No. 1 with £4.2 million, a franchise record, and finished September as the month’s top film with £9.9 million according to Comscore. Its second weekend here fell 47% to £2.2 million, a decent hold for horror.

The worldwide total also matters for the franchise’s history. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is still the series’ top earner at $314.1 million. The reboot needs about $70 million more to pass it, and it’s still adding $29 million a weekend globally.

9. The Sophomore Drops: Heart of the Beast, Primetime and Forgotten Island

What makes it stand out: Three films that opened on 25 September all lost ground, but at very different rates.

Key data: Paramount’s Heart of the Beast fell 45% to $11 million; A24’s Primetime fell about 60% to roughly $8 million (about $32.7 million after ten days); DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island fell 45% to $7.2 million, for $23 million in total.

Why it matters: Second-weekend holds tell you which of last week’s openers will last, and Heart of the Beast‘s second weekend beat Digger‘s opening outright.

Last weekend was unusual. Deadline reported three films each taking more than $20 million, with the Avengers: Endgame re-release on top. Heart of the Beast, David Ayer’s survival thriller with Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe, has held best of the three. A 45% drop for an adult-skewing action film is a good result.

Primetime is a different story. Robert Pattinson plays Chris Hansen, the host of To Catch a Predator, and the film opened well for A24. A drop of around 60% is steep, but with about $32.7 million after ten days it’s still one of A24’s stronger releases, and the studio’s films don’t cost what a Cruise film does. Reports differ slightly on the exact weekend figure, between $7.6 million and $8 million.

Forgotten Island is the sad one. DreamWorks’ animated adventure, inspired by Philippine mythology, got some of the best reviews of any animated film this year and opened to only $12.8 million. Its 45% drop is fine for a family film, but it started from too low a base. One bright spot: it posted DreamWorks Animation’s biggest ever opening in the Philippines, at ₱97.2 million.

10. Spider-Man: Brand New Day Reaches $954 Million Domestic (2026, Sony / Marvel)

What makes it stand out: Sony’s Spider-Man film is still in the top ten in its tenth weekend, edging closer to a domestic total nobody has reached before.

Key data: $2.45 million this weekend for a domestic total of $954 million; it had already passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ $936.7 million to become the biggest domestic release ever.

Why it matters: Every extra million now extends the all-time North American record, and $1 billion domestic is no longer out of the question if it keeps adding small amounts each week.

We tracked the record run in Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s Record Box Office Run. It was at $937.4 million on 18 September. Two and a bit weeks later it’s added about $17 million, which shows how slowly a film this old earns once it’s down to a couple of million each weekend.

Can it get to $1 billion domestic? Probably not in this run unless Sony gives it a re-release push. At $2.45 million a weekend and falling, it would need many more weeks than it’s likely to keep its screens. But it doesn’t need $1 billion to have made history.

The other legacy title in the chart is Avengers: Endgame Encore, Disney’s re-release of the 2019 film. It opened to about $26 million last weekend and took $4.4 million in its second. It also topped the UK and Ireland chart on 25–27 September with £4.1 million from 537 cinemas, a very healthy average of £7,678 per site.

11. What Digger’s Flop Means for UK Cinemas (Royal Film Performance, 22 September 2026)

What makes it stand out: Digger had the most prestigious British launch of any film this autumn, and it still arrives in UK cinemas with bad news from America.

Key data: The Royal Film Performance and world premiere took place in Leicester Square on 22 September 2026, attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales, in aid of the Film and TV Charity; the film opened across the UK and Ireland, including IMAX, on 2 October.

Why it matters: The UK has always been one of Cruise’s strongest markets, so the UK opening will show whether the US result is a worldwide problem or mostly an American one.

Cruise has a long relationship with British audiences and British studios. The Mission: Impossible films shot heavily here, and he’s a familiar face at London premieres. The royal premiere gave Digger wall-to-wall coverage in the UK press in the days before release, more than most films get.

But Digger goes into its UK run against strong holdovers. Resident Evil is still pulling in audiences, the Avengers re-release is doing well and Verity opens the same day. September’s UK total of £73.3 million was up 3% on last year, and the year to date is heading towards £1 billion, so the UK market itself is healthy. A soft UK start for Digger would point at the film rather than at cinemagoing.

We’ll know more when Comscore’s UK and Ireland figures for 2–4 October come out early this week. For now, the numbers from 74 international markets, $12 million in total, don’t suggest any one territory is coming to the rescue.

The Week Ahead

The next seven days are about two second weekends. Verity needs to hold above 50% to show its C+ grade was noise rather than a warning, and Digger needs to avoid a drop of 60% or worse, which would put its domestic run on course to finish under $25 million. Keep an eye on the UK numbers too. If Cruise’s British fans turn out for Digger when Americans didn’t, Warner Bros. at least gets a better story to tell its new owners. If they don’t, this will go down as one of the costliest misfires of 2026.

Sources: Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Associated Press, Screen Daily (Comscore UK data), Film and TV Charity.

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