Amazon MGM Studios’ Colleen Hoover thriller Verity grossed $4.5M in its overall previews, which is right where it should for arguably the author’s second-most-popular novel-to-screen adaptation. That figure is lower than the $7M previews of the author’s box office megahit It Ends with Us ($50M opening) and it’s ahead of the $1.9M preview cash of her Reminders of Him from earlier this year ($17.9M).

Hoover’s Regretting You last fall, which Paramount released, didn’t report preview figures from 500 screens. The weekend outlook for the Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett movie is $30M+. Previews for the R-rated Verity began yesterday at 2PM and also include early access shows.

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Critics have no patience for Verity, but they didn’t have patience for 2024’s It Ends with Us (55% Rotten) or the most recent Hoover adaptations Reminders of Him (56%) or Regretting You (29%). Audience scores, driven by women, on Hoover pics outshine the critics with Regretting You at 83% certified fresh and It Ends with Us and Reminders of Him at 87% each.

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On a night when word leaked that Warner Bros Motion Picture Chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy aren’t making the jump to the new combined Paramount-Warner Bros company, the studio’s $125M-$160M+ Tom Cruise-led satire Digger was soft everywhere with $1.2M previews. That’s lower than the preview of last fall’s One Battle After Another ($3.1M, $22M opening). The movie from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu will be lucky to open to north of $10M in North America.

Any good news here? Um, the cash so far is higher than the $770K previews made by Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed $125M epic Megalopolis, which opened to $4M via Lionsgate in 2024. Previews began for the R-rated Digger at 2 p.m. (I don’t recall any nude scenes in the movie, it has an R for F-bombs). Cruise’s movies have made $14 billion across 53 titles in 45 years. Even when he has a release, and even if it misfires, the whole value of the library rises again. Anecdotally, you could probably find a ton of Cruise titles on a major airline right now.

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How the week’s top 5 went:

1) Resident Evil (Sony) 3,684 theaters, Wk $32.1M (-60%), Total $112.3M/Wk 2

2) Avengers Endgame: Encore (Dis) 3,060 theaters, Wk $31.8M, Lifetime cume $890.1M/Wk 1 of re-issue

3) Heart of the Beast (Par) 3,435 theaters, Wk $27.3M/Wk 1

4) Primetime (A24) 2,874 theaters, Wk $25.1M/Wk 1

5) Forgotten Island (Uni/DWA) 3,548 theaters, Wk $16.4M/Wk 1

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