Tom Cruise and director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s high-profile black comedy Digger
grossed $3.4 million on its opening Friday, trailing far behind Amazon MGM Studios’ psycho-thriller Verity
, which claimed the top box office spot with $15.1 million on Friday.
Box Office Opening Figures for Digger and Verity
Warner Bros.’ R-rated black comedy generated $3.4 million from 3,321 North American theaters on Friday, October 2, following a wave of negative reviews and divided word of mouth. Industry projections place the film’s opening weekend at roughly $7.5 million to $8 million domestically. The production was greenlit at $125 million, but costs climbed to between $160 million and $180 million after production ran long.
The satirical black comedy includes Thursday previews that added $1.2 million to the opening day tally. The total fell significantly short of initial expectations that anticipated a range between $12 million and $15 million, and stands well below the targets projected by Warner Bros. before release. The opening marks a particularly sluggish launch for the studio, which has also experienced underperforming theatrical runs this year for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s punk rock feature The Bride!
and the DC comic book adaptation Supergirl
.
The project arrives during a transition for Warner Bros., serving as an inauspicious final release for the studio as a standalone entity ahead of a $111 billion merger with Paramount Skydance, scheduled for finalization on October 6. The film features Tom Cruise as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, whose corporate actions set off an ecological disaster that threatens the globe. Despite a massive marketing blitz featuring a cover for GQ, a guest appearance on the New Heights
podcast, and a Risky Business
-inspired stunt down the Jennifer Hudson Show
spirit tunnel, the picture struggled to attract ticket buyers.
By contrast, Amazon MGM Studios captured the weekend’s top spot with the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel Verity. Directed by Michael Showalter, the thriller collected $15.1 million on Friday across 3,510 North American locations and is projected to finish the weekend with an estimated $33.6 million domestically.
Audiences and Critics Give Mixed Reviews to Digger
Both major new releases faced harsh audience reactions, receiving a C+ grade on CinemaScore. For Tom Cruise, the score matches the audience grade of his 2007 war drama Lions for Lambs and stands as one of the lowest marks of his career. Critics have been sharply divided on the film, leaving Digger with a 51 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a 71 percent audience score on the platform’s Popcornmeter.
Reviewers offered mixed assessments of the star’s transformation into an oil tycoon whose company triggers an ecological calamity. The film stars Hathaway as the title novelist Verity Crawford, Johnson as struggling ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh brought in to finish an incomplete manuscript after the author is left incapacitated, and Hartnett as Jeremy, Verity’s husband.
The adaptation marks Hoover’s fourth feature film project to reach the big screen, coming after Sony’s 2024 release It Ends With Us
, Paramount’s 2025 film Regretting You
, and Universal’s 2026 picture Reminders of Him
. Despite the disappointing box office performance for Digger, Cruise’s broader career remains active, with a sequel to Days of Thunder
scheduled for release on June 2, 2028, and Paramount currently developing Top Gun 3
.
Broader Weekend Box Office Standings
Behind the top two films, Sony’s zombie horror Resident Evil secured second place with $3.62 million on Friday, heading toward a $12 million weekend that will lift its domestic total to $124.395 million. The movie stars Austin Abrams as a medical courier tasked with completing a delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital while navigating a severe zombie outbreak. Paramount Pictures’ adventure film The Heart of the Beast, starring Brad Pitt, brought in $3.15 million on Friday to reach a cumulative gross of $38.39 million. Directed by David Ayer, the adventure film follows a retired veteran and his combat dog attempting a 58-mile trek to safety after surviving an aircraft crash in the Alaskan wilderness.
A24’s fact-based thriller Primetime rounded out the top tier, grossing $2.49 million on Friday on its way to a projected $7.5 million weekend, bringing its domestic total to approximately $34 million. Directed by Lance Oppenheim, the feature chronicles the time Chris Hansen spent hosting the Dateline NBC program To Catch a Predator
and stars Robert Pattinson as the television journalist. Although the film drew favorable reviews and positive word of mouth following its debut at the Venice Film Festival earlier in the month, the real-life Hansen expressed frustration ahead of the premiere, describing the cinematic portrayal after viewing it as so bizarre and so in-and-out of reality
as well as detached from reality
. Additional notable releases slated for the following weekend include the Jessica Chastain-led thriller Other Mommy
and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning
.
Worth a look