October delivers a double act for every audience.

This year has proven the power of a great cinema pairing.

July was the perfect example. With The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day arriving just two weeks apart, the two blockbusters created a major cultural moment for cinema, driving huge audience momentum and showing the impact that comes when must-see releases share the theatrical window.

Now, October is lining up its own double act, with Digger and Verity both hitting cinemas on October 1st. Together, they’re perfectly placed to bring two very different audiences to the big screen.

Tom Cruise as Digger Rockwell in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s latest blockbuster, Digger.

On one side is Digger, a darkly comic, larger-than-life story that sees Tom Cruise play the world’s most powerful man, forced into a race to save humanity from a catastrophe of his own making. With decades of blockbuster success and a career built on action, spectacle and event cinema, Cruise remains a powerful drawcard for male audiences. Pairing Cruise with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Digger has all the ingredients of a major cultural moment.

Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh in the big-screen adaptation of Verity.

Then there’s Verity, tapping into a cultural phenomenon of an entirely different kind.

Colleen Hoover isn’t simply a bestselling author. Her novels are deeply embedded in female pop culture, supercharged by BookTok and a passionate community of readers who have turned “CoHo” releases into events of their own. Verity follows struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh, who is hired to complete the books of acclaimed author Verity Crawford, only to uncover a disturbing manuscript that raises questions about what is true and what is not. With Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett bringing one of Hoover’s most talked-about stories to the big screen, it gives her enormous fanbase a new reason to experience the story together in cinemas.

Together, Digger and Verity make for one of the year’s most compelling big-screen pairings, offering something for everyone and proving once again that when big movies come together, audiences do too.