The Thursday split
Tom Cruise’s satire Digger took in $1.2 million from Thursday previews across more than 3,300 North American locations. Warner Bros. is projecting a $12 million to $15 million domestic opening for the film, which carries a $125 million production budget.
Amazon MGM Studios’ Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity drew $4.5 million in previews from 3,510 theaters. The studio expects a $27 million to $30 million opening, and the film is likely to take the weekend’s top spot on a $40 million budget.
Two very different risk profiles
Digger is Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s big-swing satire in which Cruise plays an oil tycoon who starts a natural disaster; Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller also star. Warner Bros. is selling it as an awards play and hoping word of mouth gives it legs. Critics are split at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Hollywood Reporter’s chief film critic David Rooney wrote that the film “ultimately just prompts a worn-down shrug.”
Verity stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. Its 39% Rotten Tomatoes score is worse than Digger’s, but its budget is far lower and its preview gross was nearly four times as large. It is the second-biggest Thursday preview for a Hoover adaptation, behind It Ends With Us ($7 million), which opened to $50 million.
Why the preview-to-budget gap matters
The early numbers are a demand signal. A $1.2 million preview night against a $125 million production budget suggests Digger is not immediately converting the action audience that knows Cruise from franchise films. For media buyers, that means more caution around opening-weekend tactics and a heavier reliance on awards conversation. Verity’s $4.5 million start on a $40 million budget is a different equation: even a front-loaded thriller has a clearer path to recouping its production cost before streaming and ancillary windows are counted.
- Digger: $1.2M previews, $12M-$15M projected weekend, $125M budget, 52% RT
- Verity: $4.5M previews, $27M-$30M projected weekend, $40M budget, 39% RT
- Both films have review challenges, so Saturday holds and second-week trends will be the real signal.
A leadership shift lands alongside
Digger opens as Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy exit the studio, ahead of the Paramount Skydance merger with Warner Bros. that is expected to close Oct. 6. Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are expected to oversee film for both studios. De Luca and Abdy had a strong 2025, including Oscar wins for One Battle After Another and Sinners, but this year’s slate has brought high-profile misses such as The Bride! and Supergirl.
That transition gives the weekend a second storyline: a filmmaker-driven, star-led swing is opening just as the studio’s film leadership changes hands. For distribution and marketing teams, campaign continuity becomes the thing to watch over the next two weeks.
What to track next
Ignore the weekend ranking for a moment. The useful numbers are Friday-to-Sunday multipliers and second-week holds. If word of mouth overcomes Digger’s 52% critic score, the awards route remains open. If Verity follows the front-loaded Hoover adaptation pattern, Amazon MGM gets a low-risk theatrical win. Either way, previews are an early hint, not the final answer.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
