Verity Brings Colleen Hoover’s Darkest Bestseller to Theaters

Colleen Hoover’s most unsettling novel is finally on its way to the big screen. Verity opens October 2 with Anne Hathaway in the title role, Dakota Johnson as the struggling writer drawn into her world and Josh Hartnett as the husband caught between them. Michael Showalter directs.

Hoover adaptations have become a genuine box office force, and this is the first time one of her thrillers has been filmed. The movie is rated R — expect a psychological thriller with a streak of menace, not a love story.

The setup

Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson) is broke and stuck when Jeremy Crawford (Hartnett) makes her an offer she cannot refuse: finish the remaining books in the blockbuster series written by his wife, Verity (Hathaway), who has been left unable to work after a mysterious accident.

Moving into the Crawfords’ isolated home to go through Verity’s notes, Lowen stumbles on an unpublished manuscript that reads like a confession. Its revelations about Verity — and about Jeremy — blur every line Lowen thought she understood: fiction and reality, manipulation and desire, opportunity and obsession.

Why the book matters

Hoover self-published Verity in 2018 as a standalone thriller, a break from the romances that made her name. It has since become her second-biggest title after It Ends with Us, with more than a million copies sold in 2023 alone.

Across 26 novels Hoover has sold over 35 million copies. At the peak of the BookTok wave in 2022, she occupied six of the ten top spots on the New York Times paperback fiction list.

Behind the camera

Showalter, whose credits include The Big Sick and The Eyes of Tammy Faye, directs from a screenplay by Nick Antosca, the creator of Hulu’s The Act. The adaptation passed through several writers after development began around 2020.

Cinematographer Jim Frohna and editor Jay Cassidy round out the crew, and the score comes from Volker Bertelmann, an Oscar winner for All Quiet on the Western Front.

Hathaway signed on alongside Showalter in November 2024; Johnson and Hartnett followed a month later. The production shot in New York between February and April 2025 on a budget of roughly $40 million. The finished film runs 117 minutes and also features Ismael Cruz Córdova, with Brady Wagner as the Crawfords’ son, Crew.

The Hoover effect

It Ends with Us turned a $25 million budget into roughly $350 million worldwide in 2024. Regretting You and Reminders of Him followed, and studios now see Hoover’s readers as a dependable theatrical audience that turns out for the book.

Verity was originally dated for May 15, 2026, before shifting to fall. It will also play as a Gala selection at the Tokyo International Film Festival in late October.

The trailers position Hathaway’s Verity as both victim and puzzle, one of the darkest turns of her career, while Johnson carries the audience’s perspective — we piece the story together with Lowen, never sure whom to believe.

Release date

Verity opens in theaters October 2, from Amazon MGM Studios in the US and Canada and Sony Pictures internationally. Find the cast, stills and trailers on the Verity page in our AMDB database.