Anne Hathaway returns to a familiar place – at the top of the box office charts – as “Verity” hits the big screen this weekend. The adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling book is aiming for a solid $30-$35 million domestic debut from 3,510 theaters, which should be enough to register as Hathaway’s third opening of the year. She also starred in this summer’s blockbusters “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “The Odyssey.”
In a twist that few could have predicted this time last year, “Verity” will dominate Tom Cruise and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s R-rated environmental satire “Digger,” which also debuts this weekend. The big-budget film is shaping up to be one of the year’s biggest bombs, with opening weekend showings of $12 million to $15 million from 3,300 North American screens.
“Verity” is the latest Hoover work to get the big-screen treatment following Sony’s 2024 hit “It Ends With Us,” Paramount’s 2025 drama “Regretting You” and Universal’s 2026 romance “Reminders of Him.” Among its adaptations, “It Ends With Us” landed the biggest debut with $50 million, followed by “Reminders of Him” with $17 million and “Regretting You” with $13.6 million. “It Ends With Us” is by far the trio’s biggest hit, grossing $350 million worldwide. Hoover’s film adaptations feature modest budgets, making them low-risk bets for studios.
“Verity” was produced for $40 million and will help Amazon MGM rebound from this summer’s “Masters of the Universe,” which flopped with $113 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. Amazon MGM, a movie newcomer, scored its first major win this spring with Ryan Gosling’s astronaut drama “Project Hail Mary,” which grossed $684 million worldwide. Later this year, the studio will offer “I Play Rocky,” a crowd-pleasing film about the making of Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 classic, “Rocky,” and the heist thriller “How to Rob a Bank” starring Nicholas Hoult and Pete Davidson.
Hathaway, who also starred this year in the psychodrama “Mother Mary” and the sci-fi thriller “The End of Oak Street,” shares the screen in “Verity” with Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. Directed by Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”), the film centers on famous author Verity Crawford, who is seriously injured in a car accident, leaving her husband to hire a struggling writer to finish the remaining books in the popular series. Reviews have been mixed, with Variety Guy Lodge calls “Verity” a “listless tale” and “unintentionally funny.”
“Digger” looks to continue a dismal year for Warner Bros. — after experiencing duds such as “The Bride!” and “Supergirl” – and the timing couldn’t be worse. The acquisition of Warner Bros. by Paramount should be finalized next week. For Warners, it’s a sharp reversal of fortune from the studio’s 2025 slate, which boasted a string of unprecedented commercial triumphs, including “Sinners,” “A Minecraft Movie” and “Weapons.”
“Digger” has been greenlit at Warner Bros. for $125 million, but according to four informed sources, the budget ballooned to between $160 million and $180 million after the production went over schedule. A spokesperson for Warner Bros. disputes these figures. Box office experts say a film of this size would need a debut close to $40 million to justify its price tag.
Cruise stars in “Digger” as a wealthy oil tycoon whose business causes a potential disaster. Reviews and word of mouth were so negative that Warner Bros. began to embrace the bad press. In a new advert, the studio asked moviegoers to “decide for themselves” after critics called the film “unpleasant” and “confusing.”
Gn entert
