Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson Star in Colleen Hoover’s Verity

Verity, the screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, opens on 2 October. Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett lead the cast, and Michael Showalter directs.

After the success of It Ends with Us, studios take Hoover adaptations very seriously, and Verity is the first of her thrillers to reach the screen. It carries an R rating in the US: this is a dark story, not a romance.

What the film is about

Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson) is a writer whose career has stalled. Out of the blue she is offered a dream job: Jeremy Crawford (Josh Hartnett) hires her to finish the bestselling book series written by his wife, Verity (Anne Hathaway), who can no longer write after a mysterious accident.

Lowen moves into the Crawfords’ remote house, sorts through Verity’s study and finds a manuscript that reads like an autobiography. In it Verity confesses to disturbing things, including about her husband. Lowen finds it harder and harder to tell fiction from reality, manipulation from attraction and opportunity from obsession.

A novel that became a phenomenon

Hoover published Verity in 2018 as a standalone thriller, a departure from her romances. It became the second most popular title in her catalogue after It Ends with Us, selling more than a million copies in 2023 alone.

Hoover has written 26 novels with combined sales of more than 35 million copies. In 2022, at the height of the BookTok boom, she held six of the top ten places on the New York Times paperback fiction bestseller list.

The filmmakers

Michael Showalter is known for The Big Sick and The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The final screenplay is by Nick Antosca, creator of the series The Act; several other writers worked on it earlier, as the project had been in development since 2020.

Jim Frohna shot the film and Jay Cassidy edited it. The score is by Volker Bertelmann, who won an Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front.

Showalter and Hathaway were announced in November 2024, with Johnson and Hartnett joining in December. Filming took place in New York from February to April 2025. The budget is about $40 million and the running time 117 minutes. Ismael Cruz Córdova also appears, and Brady Wagner plays Crew, the Crawfords’ son.

Why the industry is watching

It Ends with Us (2024) cost $25 million and grossed around $350 million worldwide. Regretting You (2025) and Reminders of Him (2026) followed, and Hollywood started talking about a “Colleen Hoover cinematic universe” — stories aimed at a female audience that goes to the cinema because of the book.

Verity was first scheduled for 15 May 2026 before moving to the autumn. At the end of October it will also screen in the Gala section of the Tokyo International Film Festival.

For Anne Hathaway it is one of her darkest roles: the trailers suggest her character is both a victim and the central mystery. Dakota Johnson gets the audience’s point of view instead — we uncover Verity’s story alongside Lowen and, like her, never quite know whom to trust.

When to watch

The film opens on 2 October. Amazon MGM Studios distributes it in the US and Canada, and Sony Pictures handles the rest of the world. Stills, trailers and the full cast are on the film’s page in our AMDB database.