How good is $4.5 million, exactly? That is what Verity previews brought in on Thursday night, a figure reported by both Variety and Deadline, while Tom Cruise’s Digger managed $1.2 million. A preview total means very little in isolation, though. The useful question is what Colleen Hoover’s audience has done with a Thursday number before, and there are now three earlier films to measure against.
FanBolt called this matchup lopsided in our weekend box office preview, when Variety’s tracking had the Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson thriller at $30 million to $35 million and Digger at $12 million to $15 million. Thursday night moved neither range. What it did was show which Hoover movie this one is behaving like.
Some context for anyone who has not read it: Verity is the odd one out in Hoover’s catalog, a 2018 psychological thriller instead of a romance, and one her readers have been waiting years to see on screen. That matters for a Thursday number, because a fan base that has waited this long tends to show up early. My guess is an opening in the low $30 millions, and here is why.
Where ‘Verity’ Ranks Among Colleen Hoover Adaptations
| Film | Thursday previews | Opening weekend | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| It Ends With Us (2024) | $7 million | $50 million | About 7x |
| Verity (2026) | $4.5 million | Estimates due Sunday | TBD |
| Reminders of Him (2026) | $1.9 million | Just under $18 million | About 9.5x |
| Regretting You (2025) | $1 million | $13.7 million | About 13.7x |
It Ends With Us is the ceiling. Blake Lively’s drama took in $7 million on its Thursday in August 2024, per TheWrap, and turned that into a $50 million opening, roughly seven times the preview figure. Verity‘s $4.5 million is about 64% of that Thursday, which is a strong place to be for an R-rated thriller sitting well under 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The other two films are the floor. Reminders of Him opened to just under $18 million in March after $1.9 million on Thursday, a number we tracked in our opening day coverage. That same report, citing Deadline, put Regretting You at $1 million in previews ahead of its $13.7 million debut last October. So Verity more than doubled the better of those two Thursdays and more than quadrupled the weaker one.
Now run the math. At the It Ends With Us multiple of about seven, $4.5 million becomes roughly $32 million, which sits inside Variety’s range and inside the wider $25 million to $35 million that Boxoffice Pro forecast. At the Reminders of Him multiple of about nine and a half, it becomes roughly $43 million.
I am staying at the lower end of that spread. Small preview numbers tend to produce big multiples, and a starry thriller with a fan base this patient is the kind of movie whose crowd shows up on night one. Even so, a $30 million to $35 million weekend on a $40 million budget would be the second-best Hoover opening by a wide margin, and Variety notes it would give Hathaway her third No. 1 of the year after The Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada 2.
What $1.2 Million Says About ‘Digger’
Nothing kind. Variety has Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s satire opening at $12 million to $15 million, and Boxoffice Pro is lower still at $8 million to $12 million. Reaching even the bottom of Variety’s range would take ten times the Thursday figure. Adult dramas can do that, since their audience rarely rushes out on a weeknight, but that is a hope and not a trend line.
The budget is what turns a soft start into a problem. TheWrap puts the production cost at $125 million, and Variety reports that it grew to more than $160 million. There is an uncomfortable echo here for anyone who remembers the weekend It Ends With Us opened. The expensive movie on the other side of that Hoover adaptation was Borderlands, which TheWrap reported at $1.32 million in previews against a $110 million budget. Cruise’s film started below that.
Studio estimates arrive Sunday, October 4, and the number to circle is $32 million. If the weekend lands above it, Thursday undersold the movie, and Hoover’s audience turned out to be bigger on Saturday than it was on Thursday.
