Verity box office win: $33M opening beats Digger

Hollywood spent the whole weekend talking about one movie's historic flop, but the real headline belongs to the other new release. The Verity box office run kicked off with a $32.6 million domestic opening, easily taking the No. 1 spot at theaters across North America, according to The Playlist. Amazon MGM's psychological thriller, starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, also pulled in $30 million overseas for a $62.6 million global start. For a film made on a reported $40 million budget, that is a genuinely strong result, and it arrived despite some of the weakest reviews of any major release this year.

On Friday alone, the film earned $15.1 million across 3,510 locations, per TheWrap, including $4.5 million from Thursday previews. That put it far ahead of Tom Cruise's Digger, which managed just $3.4 million on its opening day and is headed for a $7.5 to $8 million weekend. The Verity box office victory is especially notable because critics were brutal: the film holds a 34% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a C+ CinemaScore from opening-night audiences, a grade that usually signals trouble for a film's second weekend.

How the Verity box office win actually happened

The secret weapon is not complicated. Verity is based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover, and Hoover's readers are a box-office force that Hollywood keeps underestimating. As reported by The Playlist, her adaptations have become a dependable draw: 2024's It Ends With Us opened to $50 million, while 2025's Regretting You ($13.8 million) and Reminders of Him ($18 million) both performed solidly against modest budgets. The Verity box office opening lands between those marks, below It Ends With Us but comfortably above the other two, which makes it another proof point that this fandom is as reliable as any superhero franchise.

The audience makeup tells the story. Per box office analyst Scott Mendelson, the Verity box office crowd skewed 79% female on Friday, with 41% of ticket buyers between the ages of 25 and 34. Mendelson noted that female-driven films barely need men to show up for commercial success, while male-skewing blockbusters increasingly depend on women crossing over. It is a pattern Gen Z knows intuitively: the group chat decides the movie, and BookTok decides the group chat. When Hoover's millions of readers coordinate a release-weekend plan, the result is a built-in opening that marketing alone cannot buy.

Anne Hathaway's impossible year

The Verity box office result also caps off one of the most remarkable single years any movie star has had in recent memory. According to The Playlist, this is Anne Hathaway's fourth movie of 2026 to open above $20 million, following The Devil Wears Prada 2, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and The End of Oak Street. Earlier coverage noted her 2026 slate also includes Mother Mary, making Verity her fifth film of the year. Hathaway is now reportedly stepping away from the spotlight for the birth of her third child, an exit that comes at the absolute peak of her commercial power.

Co-star Dakota Johnson scores her second hit in a row here after The Materialists last year, continuing a run that has turned her into one of Hollywood's most quietly bankable leads. Director Michael Showalter, best known for lighter fare, leaned into the novel's self-aware, trashy pleasures, and while critics did not bite, audiences rated it 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, far above the critics' 34%.

What it means for Hollywood

There are a couple of reasons this Verity box office story matters beyond one weekend. First, the film is expected to turn a modest theatrical profit for Amazon MGM, per TheWrap, and it will likely earn plenty of streaming attention on Prime Video, where these thrillers really thrive. Second, the C+ CinemaScore suggests Verity is frontloaded, meaning it made most of its money from fans rushing out on opening weekend rather than from audiences discovering it later. For a $40 million film, that is fine. For the $150-million-plus event movies that need month-long runs, it is a warning: the only reliable opening weekends left are the ones with a pre-built audience.

The contrast with Digger makes the lesson sharper. Warner Bros. spent a reported $160 to $180 million on Tom Cruise's satirical comedy, and it is headed for one of the worst openings of his career, with some analysts projecting losses of $150 to $200 million. Meanwhile, a $40 million thriller based on a book millions of people already loved is already on its way to profitability. The Verity box office win does not mean mid-budget movies are back in general. It means the ones with a fandom attached never really left, and Hollywood keeps being surprised by the same audience over and over again. For more on how fandom economics are reshaping entertainment, keep reading GenZ NewZ and our culture and movies coverage.