The first weekend of October belonged to a manuscript full of secrets. Verity, Amazon MGM Studios’ big-screen take on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling thriller, opened at No. 1 in North America with an estimated $32.6 million from 3,510 theaters between October 2 and 4. That works out to a healthy per-screen average of roughly $9,300, and the film has already reached about $62.6 million worldwide.
Last week our preview pegged Verity for a $25–35 million debut. It landed squarely in the upper half of that range, which says a lot about how reliably Hoover’s readers turn up for adaptations of her books.
Critics shrugged, audiences showed up
The opening is all the more striking because reviews were rough. Verity sits at about 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, yet the pairing of Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson, plus the novel’s built-in fan base, carried it comfortably past every holdover. It’s a familiar pattern for page-to-screen thrillers: the people who already loved the twist want to see how the movie handles it, and they bring friends who haven’t read the book.
Digger digs in at fifth
The weekend’s other wide opener had a harder time. Warner Bros.’ Digger, the Tom Cruise picture that got a royal London premiere a couple of weeks ago, managed an estimated $8 million from 3,321 locations, good for fifth place and a per-screen average of about $2,400. For a Cruise-led release, that’s a modest start, and the film will need strong word of mouth and overseas business to make up the gap.
There’s a fun bit of trivia tying the two openers together: Hathaway and Cruise are next set to share the screen in Days of Thunder 2.
The rest of the top five
- Resident Evil (Sony) slid to second with $12.5 million in its third weekend, pushing its domestic total to about $124.9 million.
- Heart of the Beast (Paramount) took third with $11 million and now sits at roughly $38.4 million.
- Primetime (A24) earned about $8 million in its second frame, bringing it to around $34.1 million.
- Digger rounded out the top five with its $8 million debut.
Further down, DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island added $7.2 million, and the Avengers: Endgame encore re-release, last weekend’s champion, dropped about 83% to $4.4 million now that its event run is winding down.
A strong October so far
All told, the weekend generated close to $99 million domestically. That’s down about 22% from the crowded previous frame, but up nearly 19% on the same weekend in 2025. With awards hopefuls and horror titles lining up for the rest of the month, theaters are heading into Halloween season in decent shape.
For Verity, the real question is staying power. Thrillers built on a big reveal can fall quickly once the twist is out there, but if Hoover fans keep recommending it, Amazon MGM could have one of the fall’s more profitable surprises on its hands.