Tom Cruise's Digger got all the headlines — Brad Pitt's dog film got the audience
One of the two films cost about twice as much and got a C+ from its audience. The other was written off as a soft opener a month ago.
Brad Pitt's Heart of the Beast took $7.1 million in North America over its third weekend, 9–11 October 2026, slipping just 35%. That lifts the Paramount survival film to $49.6 million domestically, or about $50 million once the final numbers are in. Four places below it, Tom Cruise's Digger made $3.2 million in its second weekend, down 60%, for $14.4 million in total.
So a film in its third weekend took more than twice as much as one in its second. Same autumn, two stars in their sixties, and the race went the wrong way round.
Two stars, two very different autumns
On paper, this was never meant to be a contest. Digger was the event: Alejandro G. Iñárritu directing, Cruise as an oil tycoon whose company causes an ecological catastrophe, a big-budget R-rated satire. Heart of the Beast was the modest one: David Ayer directing, Pitt as a retired Special Forces veteran stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with his combat dog after a plane crash.
Here is how the two compare so far:
- Opening weekend: about $20 million for Pitt; $8 million for Cruise, his lowest start since Lions for Lambs in 2007.
- Audience grade: A− on CinemaScore for Heart of the Beast; C+ for Digger, according to Deadline's opening-weekend report.
- Budget: a reported net $82 million for Pitt's film. Digger was greenlit at $125 million and, by Variety's estimates, ended up at $160–180 million.
- Second-weekend drop: 45% for Pitt, 60% for Cruise.
Pitt's opening was treated as soft at the time. Variety called $20 million disappointing for an $82 million price tag, and Deadline felt obliged to add: "don't put the movie in the doghouse". Three weekends later, the soft start has been more than doubled by word of mouth, and Deadline now credits the film with "great staying power" and a 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Read more: Tom Cruise’s Digger just had an even worse second weekend at the box office
The film nobody argued about
Digger had the column inches. Anne Hathaway, Jane Fonda, Guillermo del Toro and Mandy Patinkin publicly urged people to go and see it. Iñárritu said he made it for Gen Z. Deadline went with "the costly Warner Bros. debacle". Pitt's film, meanwhile, simply played: strongest in the West, the South and the Midwest, and it left audiences, Deadline's own chief critic included, moved and crying.
On r/boxoffice, the top comment in the weekend thread did the maths out loud:
"Nuts that Heart of the Beast's current domestic might be higher than Digger's worldwide finish (considering how much more discussion the latter has generated...)"
It isn't a stretch. Variety expects Digger to end its run with roughly $50 million globally. Pitt's film has about that from North America alone, before a single overseas ticket is counted.
Digger had the conversation. Heart of the Beast had the queue at the box office.
Same studio, very different bills
Digger was Warner Bros.' last standalone release before the studio merges with Paramount, the company behind Heart of the Beast. Once the deal closes, the new owners inherit both: the cheaper film that kept selling tickets and the dearer one that lost its audience after a single weekend.
Heart of the Beast still has the overseas run to carry it towards its budget, and on a 35% drop it has a few more weekends in it yet. Digger is on its way down the chart, and probably to a streaming service near you.
Cruise is 64, Pitt is 62. This autumn the younger man won, and all it took was a dog.
Read more: Sacha Baron Cohen has three months on a London stage to decide Quentin Tarantino's last film