‘Verity’ Tops Box Office as ‘Digger’ Suffers Massive Opening-Day Drop

Despite an extensive promotional campaign featuring a GQ cover, a podcast appearance on “New Heights,” and a stunt inspired by “Risky Business” on “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” Warner Bros.’ “Digger” failed to attract audiences, generating just $3.4 million on Friday.

The R-rated black comedy, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon responsible for an ecological disaster, opened in 3,321 North American theaters to negative reviews and lukewarm word of mouth. Early estimates project an opening weekend total of only $7.5 million domestically, marking it as one of the year’s most significant box office failures.

Production costs for “Digger” ballooned from an initial $125 million budget to between $160 million and $180 million due to scheduling overruns. With studios typically splitting ticket revenue with theater operators, the film is poised to incur substantial losses during its theatrical run.

This release adds to a string of underperformers for Warner Bros. this year, following the commercial struggles of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” and the DC adaptation “Supergirl.” Despite Cruise’s consistent box office success with franchises like “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Digger” has struggled to find its audience.

Meanwhile, Amazon MGM’s psychological thriller “Verity” seized the top position on Friday, earning $15.1 million across 3,510 theaters. Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, the film features Anne Hathaway as a writer with a dark past, Josh Hartnett as her husband, and Dakota Johnson as the ghostwriter hired to complete her series. Director Michael Showalter helmed the project, which is Hoover’s fourth novel adaptation to reach theaters, following “It Ends With Us,” “Regretting You,” and “Reminders of Him.” The film is expected to gross approximately $33.6 million over the weekend.

In third place, Paramount’s adventure film “The Heart of the Beast” pulled in $3.15 million, bringing its cumulative domestic total to $38.39 million. Directed by David Ayer, the Brad Pitt-led story follows a retired veteran and his combat dog surviving a plane crash in Alaska. It fell short of Sony’s “Resident Evil,” which held second place with $3.62 million on Friday. Starring Austin Abrams as a medical courier navigating a zombie outbreak, the Sony title is projected to add $12 million by Sunday, reaching a domestic total of $124.395 million.

A24’s “Primetime” rounded out the top five with $2.49 million on Friday and is forecast to earn another $7.5 million over the weekend, pushing its domestic total to $28.58 million. The Robert Pattinson-led drama chronicles Chris Hansen’s tenure hosting NBC’s “To Catch a Predator.” While the film received positive critical response following its Venice Film Festival debut, Hansen himself criticized the portrayal, calling the movie “bizarre” and “detached from reality.” Despite the controversy, “Primetime” achieved the third-largest opening weekend for A24, trailing only “Backrooms” and “Civil War.”