Tom Cruise in 'Digger.' Courtesy Logo text Tom Cruise took a big swing with Digger that did not pay off in its opening weekend at the box office, as the satirical black comedy becomes a major disappointment for Warner Bros.
Filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Digger opened to $8 million from 3,300 North American theaters, which is tough to swallow for a feature that carries a production budget of $125 million. (Reports have emerged that the budget rose to closer to $180 million, a figure that a studio representative disputes.) This marks a letdown from even the scant $12 million to $15 million that Warner Bros. had projected heading into the weekend and represents Cruise’s softest opening frame since 2007’s war drama Lions for Lambs launched to $6.7 million but with a much smaller budget. Digger added $12 million internationally.
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The film always looked to be a bold effort designed to spark conversation and ideally hold awards prospects, as Cruise transformed himself into a balding, pot-bellied oil tycoon with an attitude who learns he caused a natural disaster. The awards buzz may prove tough to come by at this point, given that Digger was hit with a C+ CinemaScore from audiences, landing as one of the lowest grades for Cruise’s career, and has polarized critics. Its Rotten Tomatoes score from reviewers stands at 51 percent approval, with The Hollywood Reporter’s review from chief film critic David Rooney deeming it “dead and buried.”
Weeks ago, third-party tracking services initially suggested that Digger could open to closer to $30 million, but interest appeared to crumble in the 10 days leading up to release. Digger will go down as a significant financial loss for Warner Bros., marking an inauspicious final release before Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion merger with the studio is expected to be finalized Oct. 6. News broke days ago that Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are exiting the studio, with Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein taking over. De Luca and Abdy’s impressive 2025 saw the releases of acclaimed Oscar winners One Battle After Another and Sinners, while 2026’s results have been far less stirring.
Anne Hathaway in Verity. Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios After this brief detour to auteur-driven fare that brings to mind Cruise’s earlier-career projects like Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia, the star will quickly return to the action-heavy, IP-driven movies that his audiences have come to expect, with Days of Thunder 2 soon revving up production. On Saturday morning, Cruise took to social media to assert that he remained “so proud of what we created” with Digger.
Nabbing the top spot on the domestic chart was Amazon MGM Studios’ Verity, as the feature adaptation of the Colleen Hoover novel notched $32.6 million from 3,510 North American locations. This is an encouraging start for the $40 million-budgeted thriller from filmmaker Michael Showalter that stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett.
Verity’s critical response was far less spirited. It was saddled with the same disappointing C+ CinemaScore as Digger and holds a 34 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from reviewers, with critic Richard Lawson writing for THR that it’s a “literary misfire.” Verity centers on a struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) taking a job as a ghostwriter for acclaimed author Verity Crawford (Hathaway).
“Verity’s debut is another win for female-driven movies at the box office,” Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder Shawn Robbins tells THR. “Following an eclectic field of openers last weekend, the adaptation adds to a healthy mix of content in cinemas right now while adding to what’s become a banner year for Anne Hathaway.”
Despite the Digger setback, this weekend is set to generate a collective total of around $100 million domestically, according to Rentrak. This would put the frame up roughly 16 percent over last year’s equivalent weekend, when Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl led the North American chart with $34.1 million. The 2026 domestic box office looks to hit $7.95 billion on Sunday, marking a 19 percent increase over the same point in 2025.
Still showing teeth as this weekend’s runner-up in its third frame is Sony’s Resident Evil, which picked up $12.5 million to bring its domestic total to $124.8 million. Austin Abrams leads director Zach Cregger’s successful reboot of the video game property.
Over the weekend, Disney’s Avengers: Endgame returned to No. 1 on the all-time global box office chart. With its Avengers Endgame: Encore rerelease timed to build momentum for this December’s Avengers: Doomsday, the 2019 Marvel Studios hit reclaims the top spot that it first achieved in the year of its release, when it initially surpassed 2009’s Avatar. Endgame fell to the runner-up ranking two years later as Avatar’s 2021 rerelease put the James Cameron blockbuster back at No. 1.
More to come.
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