LOS ANGELES — Tom Cruise spent the week on a press tour that included a GQ cover, the New Heights podcast, and a Risky Business bit on the Jennifer Hudson show. None of it saved Digger on opening day. Warner Bros.’ R-rated black comedy grossed $3.4 million Friday from 3,321 theaters, Variety reported, with a weekend estimate around $7.5 million.
Alejandro González Iñárritu directed Cruise as an oil tycoon whose company sets off an environmental disaster. Knowledgeable sources told Variety the film was greenlit at $125 million and finished between $160 million and $180 million after a long production. Studios split ticket sales with theaters, so a start that small points to a steep theatrical loss. It joins a rough Warner year that already includes The Bride! and Supergirl.
Amazon MGM’s Verity took Friday’s top spot with $15.1 million from 3,510 theaters and is expected to reach about $33.6 million for the weekend. Michael Showalter directed the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel. Anne Hathaway plays author Verity Crawford, injured in a crash. Josh Hartnett plays her husband, who hires a struggling writer, Dakota Johnson, to finish the books. It is the fourth Hoover novel on screen, after It Ends With Us, Regretting You, and Reminders of Him.
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil was second on Friday with $3.62 million and is looking at about $12 million for the weekend, which would put the Sony film near $124.4 million domestically. Austin Abrams stars. The Heart of the Beast, with Brad Pitt as a veteran trying to walk 58 miles out of Alaska with his dog after a plane crash, added $3.15 million and sits at $38.39 million. David Ayer directed. A24’s Primetime, with Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen in a film about Dateline’s To Catch a Predator, grossed $2.49 million Friday and has made $28.58 million. Hansen, after seeing it, called the movie bizarre and detached from reality.