Welcome BACK to the Weekend POURcast, your boozy guide to the box office.
Every Friday, we’ve been serving up what movies are new in theaters and on streaming, paired with curated cocktail suggestions to match the weekend.
And yes, it has been a while. We’re sorry. We took most of the summer and September off from the weekly POURcast, and Monday Morning Box Office Hangover Report but the movies certainly did not take the summer off. With October arriving, Halloween movies warming up in the bullpen, awards season beginning to peek around the corner, and one very messy psychological thriller looking ready to take the weekend, it feels like a pretty good time to pour another round.
We are officially back.
Last Weekend in Review
Before we get to October, a very quick look backward. The summer ended up being exactly the kind of theatrical season we had been hoping to see. Spider-Man: Brand New Day became the summer’s (and all-time) monster domestic hit, The Odyssey turned Christopher Nolan’s epic into another theatrical event, Toy Story 5 delivered for families, and unexpected genre successes like Obsession and Backrooms proved audiences were still willing to show up for movies that felt different.
September cooled things down considerably, as September tends to do, but it was hardly dead. Resident Evil led the month’s new releases, Practical Magic 2 found its audience, and the final weekend gave us an unusually crowded Top 5.
An Avengers: Endgame rerelease actually won last weekend with $26.1 million. Resident Evil followed with $23 million in its second weekend, while Brad Pitt’s Heart of the Beast debuted with $20 million, A24’s Primetime opened with $19.2 million, and Forgotten Island rounded out the Top 5 with $13 million.
Not exactly a sleepy September exit. Now October gets to take over.
New in Theaters This Weekend
Verity
This feels like the movie to beat.
Based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, Verity stars Dakota Johnson as struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh, who is hired to complete the books of successful author Verity Crawford after an accident leaves Verity unable to work. Once Lowen begins digging through Verity’s notes and manuscripts, she starts discovering things she probably wishes she had left in the drawer.
Anne Hathaway plays Verity, Josh Hartnett plays her husband, and Michael Showalter directs. This is a very different animal from the more straightforward romantic dramas associated with Hoover adaptations. It is darker, sexier, nastier, and much closer to the airport-thriller tradition of secrets, unreliable narrators, suspicious spouses, and people making increasingly questionable decisions inside very expensive houses.
Early reviews are mixed, but that may not matter much. The novel brings a built-in audience, Hathaway and Johnson bring star power, and the thriller hook is incredibly easy to sell. Current tracking has it comfortably ahead of the rest of the weekend.
Digger
On paper, Digger sounds like one of those movies built specifically to make film people start arguing. Tom Cruise, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, and Sandra Hüller are all attached to a large-scale dark comedy about an industrialist attempting to repair the catastrophic damage caused by his own business empire.
That combination originally looked like it could turn into one of October’s major adult events. Instead, the early reactions have been wildly divided.
The reviews have been polarized enough that Warner Bros. has actually leaned into the criticism in the marketing, essentially telling audiences to go see the movie and decide for themselves. That might work, or it might be the cinematic equivalent of telling someone, “The milk tastes like it has turned, but keep drinking.”
Either way, Cruise doing something this far outside his usual action-star lane makes Digger one of the most interesting movies opening this weekend, even if it no longer looks like the box office threat many expected a few weeks ago.
The Scout
Greenwich Entertainment is also taking The Scout wide this weekend. The comedy-drama stars Rutanya Alda, Matt Barats, Mimi Davila, and Jackson Devereux and gives the weekend a much smaller alternative to the star-driven studio releases.
It is not realistically competing with Verity or Digger for the top of the chart, but that does not mean it should be ignored. October is increasingly becoming the season when smaller adult movies begin slipping into theaters alongside the bigger commercial swings.
Also Arriving in Theaters
If you want something a little more specialized, this weekend has plenty of side dishes. The 25th anniversary rerelease of Donnie Darko returns to theaters, which feels extremely appropriate for October, while A24 is also bringing Moonlight back for its 10th anniversary.
On the genre side, Ghost in the Cell mixes action, comedy, horror, and thriller elements, while Beware Boiúna, Appofeniacs, and The Influencer Project give horror fans a handful of smaller options as we begin the annual march toward Halloween.
There is something beautifully reassuring about reaching October and immediately having this many movies involving things going terribly wrong. Nature is healing.
Box Office Forecast: October 2nd-4th, 2026
1. Verity
$27M to $34M
This is the clearest No. 1 call of the weekend. The Colleen Hoover audience gives it a strong foundation, but the bigger advantage may be the combination of Hathaway, Johnson, Hartnett, and the psychological-thriller hook. The reviews probably keep it from exploding into something enormous, but $30 million territory feels very achievable.
2. Digger
$9M to $13M
A few weeks ago I would have put this considerably higher. Now, the divisive reaction appears to be taking its toll. Cruise still has drawing power, and curiosity around the movie could help, but this increasingly looks like the kind of expensive adult swing that generates a lot more conversation than ticket sales.
3. Heart of the Beast
$9M to $12M
Brad Pitt’s survival drama opened to $20 million last weekend and earned solid audience marks. That should give it enough stability to remain near the top, particularly with older moviegoers.
4. Resident Evil
$8M to $12M
The second-weekend drop was steep, but the reboot has already crossed $100 million domestic. More importantly, October just arrived, and there are worse places to be than a successful horror movie entering Halloween season.
5. Primetime
$8M to $11M
A24’s dark reality-TV thriller opened strongly last weekend, particularly with younger audiences. The race from second through fifth could be incredibly tight, and Primetime has enough heat to jump a couple positions if word of mouth stays strong.
October Horror Check
And just like that, horror season is officially open.
Resident Evil enters October as one of September’s biggest hits. Several smaller horror titles arrive this weekend, and the next few weeks are stacked with movies trying to capitalize on the Halloween crowd.
But the funny thing is that this weekend’s most Halloween-friendly major movie might actually be Verity. It is not technically a horror film. It is a psychological mystery-thriller. But creepy house, secrets, possible murder, and Anne Hathaway staring at people like she knows exactly how they are going to die? Close enough.
Pour something strong.
New Movies on Streaming This Weekend
The couch has a few new options this weekend too. Among the October 2 streaming arrivals are Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, The Last First: Winter K2, Infirmary, Nickels, Doing Life, Stu Plus Who?, Backpay, and Intensive Purposes.
For the horror crowd, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is probably the first title worth circling. If we are officially starting October, we might as well begin with something that sounds like it came straight from the back shelf of a 1987 video store. And I mean that as a compliment.
Weekend Drink Pairing: The Locked Vault
For our first Weekend POURcast back, we are reaching into the Cocktails and Movies bar and pulling out The Locked Vault.
There really could not be a better match for Verity. The entire movie revolves around hidden writing, buried secrets, unanswered questions, and the dangerous consequences of opening something that probably should have remained closed.
That is The Locked Vault in cocktail form.
It also gives us exactly what we want from these pairings: a drink already living on CocktailsandMovies.com that connects naturally to the weekend’s biggest movie while giving readers somewhere else to explore on the site.
Unlock responsibly.
Final Pour
So here we are again.
Summer gave movie theaters some genuinely enormous victories. September slowed things down but still produced Resident Evil, Practical Magic 2, Primetime, and a bizarrely successful return trip for Avengers: Endgame.
Now October begins with secrets, psychological manipulation, Tom Cruise taking one of the strangest swings of his career, several fresh horror movies, and Donnie Darko wandering back into theaters twenty-five years later. In other words, this feels like exactly the right weekend to bring the POURcast back.
The bar is open again. We missed you. 🍸🍿
