Tom Cruise’s Excavator begins a bumpy road at the box office as it opens in theaters amid a period of transition for the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.
Excavator raised $1.2 million domestically in Thursday previews ahead of its opening this weekend in more than 3,300 North American locations. Warner Bros. expects a start of between $12 million and $15 million for the satire which has a production budget of $125 million.
This ambitious film from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu marks a major turning point for both the studio and the star. Excavator bears no resemblance to the recent action franchises Cruise is known for and is reminiscent of the more filmmaker-driven projects from earlier in his career, such as Rain man, Born July 4 And Magnolia. Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller also star in Excavatorwhich focuses on Cruise’s daring oil tycoon grappling with the outbreak of a natural disaster.
Warner Bros. sees this as a play and hopes for legs through word of mouth, although reviews are mixed, as Excavator holds a 52 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. In his criticism for The Hollywood Reporterchief film critic David Rooney wrote that the film “ultimately only provokes a tired shrug.”
The film arrives in theaters as news broke that Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were leaving the studio. The move comes ahead of Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. which is expected to be finalized on October 6, with Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein expected to oversee the film side of both studios. De Luca and Abdy had a glittering 2025, highlighted by Oscar wins for titles as famous as One battle after another And Sinnersalthough discussions around this year’s production have been dominated by high-profile duds like The Bride! And Supergirl.
Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett in Truth.
Alisha Wetherill/Amazon MGM Studios
Meanwhile, Amazon MGM Studios Truth is expected to take the top spot this weekend as spooky season begins. Launching Friday in 3,510 North American theaters, Truth grossed $4.5 million from Thursday previews. The studio is projecting an opening of between $27 million and $30 million for filmmaker Michael Showalter’s thriller, which has a production budget of $40 million. With Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, Truth adapts Colleen Hoover’s novel about struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) who takes on a ghostwriter role for acclaimed author Verity Crawford (Hathaway).
Its preview total is the second-best sum for a Hoover feature adaptation, behind the $7 million for Sony’s struggling 2024 offering. It ends with us this landed a $50 million opening weekend domestically. Last year, Universal’s adaptation of Hoover’s Reminders of him collected $1.9 million in previews en route to a $17.9 million domestic opening weekend.
Truth holds a tough 39 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from critics. The critic Richard Lawson wrote for THR that the film “tumbles off a cliff, plummets past so-bad-it’s-good, and crashes onto the rocks of mindless agony.”
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