Verity Opens Friday as the First R-Rated Colleen Hoover Movie. Forecasts Say Hit, but the Real Test Is the Second Weekend

Every fall there's one movie that sneaks up on the calendar, and I think this year it's a movie about a ghostwriter, a car accident, and a stack of pages nobody was supposed to read. Verity opens Friday. If you've spent any time around BookTok in the last few years, you already know what it is. If you haven't, here's the short version: it's the thriller Colleen Hoover self-published in 2018, and it is not a love story the way her other movies are.

Here's what made me want to write about it before it opens. Three Hoover novels have already become movies, and all three were rated PG-13. Verity is rated R, it's darker, and it reportedly cost $40 million. The two earlier Hoover movies I could find budgets for, It Ends With Us and Reminders of Him, each cost about $25 million. That's not a small tweak to a formula. It's a bet that her readers will follow her into the dark, and that plenty of other people will buy a ticket too.

I haven't seen it, so this isn't a review, and I'd be wary of any site that ran one this weekend. It's my read on the numbers, the early reactions, and the one thing I think will actually decide whether Verity is a hit.

When does Verity come out, and is it rated R?

Verity opens Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, in theaters in the United States and Canada, released by Amazon MGM Studios. Sony Pictures Releasing International handles overseas markets, where dates vary by country. It's rated R, and it runs 117 minutes according to Wikipedia's listing. Here's the quick reference card:

One detail I found interesting: this was originally supposed to open in May. Variety reported last year that Verity was dated May 15, 2026, and that the date was chosen to counterprogram the male-skewing tentpoles of that month, including The Mandalorian and Grogu and Avengers: Doomsday. I couldn't find an official explanation for the move to October. What I can say is that Doomsday has since moved to Dec. 18, and Verity now opens into a fall box office that's running hot.

What is Verity about, and who's in it? (No spoilers)

Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who gets hired to finish a bestselling thriller series for author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), who can't write it herself after a car accident. Lowen moves into the Crawford home and works alongside Verity's husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett). Then she finds what looks like Verity's own private, chilling notes, and it gets harder and harder for her to tell fiction from reality. Johnson told Rotten Tomatoes that the romance in this movie is the unhealthy kind, which tells you how far we are from a swoony love story.

Michael Showalter, who directed Hathaway in The Idea of You, is behind the camera, and Nick Antosca wrote the screenplay. Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner round out the main cast, and Hoover is one of the producers alongside Hathaway. On the book side, Hoover self-published Verity in 2018. Grand Central Publishing picked it up in 2021, and Variety reports it sold more than a million copies in 2023 alone. So this isn't a book with a small fan base waiting for a movie. It's one with a very large fan base that has been waiting a long time.

What are the first reactions to Verity saying?

Split. That's the honest headline. ScreenRant rounded up early reactions, many of them from Letterboxd viewers who caught it ahead of release, and the range runs from a four-and-a-half-star rave to a two-and-a-half-star pan. Here's how the two camps sound:

Remember what these are: social posts from people who saw it early, not a critics' consensus. As of Monday evening I couldn't find a Rotten Tomatoes score, and Metacritic's page still listed critic reviews as unavailable. I'd wait for the full reviews before deciding it's a triumph or a mess. If you want to see how quickly early buzz and final scores can drift apart, my piece on Tom Cruise's Digger is a good case study.

How much will Verity make opening weekend? Every forecast side by side

The trackers disagree by as much as $21 million between the lowest number I found and the highest, which is unusually wide for a movie opening in five days. Here's every forecast I could find, plus my own.

Why $24 million? Three things pull me up: reportedly strong pre-sales, Hoover's proven audience, and a box office that's running hot. Last weekend all movies combined took an estimated $122.3 million, according to Deadline, the best total for that weekend of the year since 2015. Two things hold me back: the reactions are split, and it's the first Hoover movie with an R rating, which I'd guess trims the potential audience a little. For context, Hathaway's thriller The End of Oak Street opened to about $21 million, and Verity is her fifth movie of 2026.

Colleen Hoover's four movies by the numbers (my ledger)

Before you can judge whether a forecast is good, you need to know what a Hoover movie usually does. I put all four in one place, and the last column is my own math: worldwide total divided by opening weekend.

Three things jump out at me:

• Hoover movies aren't one-weekend wonders. Each of the three finished between roughly five and seven times its opening weekend worldwide. That's a healthy pattern for a fan-driven release.
• The weakest multiple came with the weakest word of mouth. Reminders of Him earned a B from CinemaScore audiences, according to Variety, and it has the lowest multiple of the three. I can't prove one caused the other, but it's the pattern I'd watch on Friday night.
• Verity is the outlier in every column that matters. It's the only R rating, the biggest budget I can confirm, and the first Hoover movie to ask viewers for a scare instead of a cry.

What does Verity need to make to break even? (My math)

I'm using the same rule of thumb I used for Digger: a movie generally needs about 2.5 times its budget worldwide to break even once marketing and theater splits are counted. It's a rough guide, not an accounting statement, and studios never publish the real numbers. For a $40 million budget, that's about $100 million worldwide.

Now flip the ledger around. If Verity finishes with the same worldwide-to-opening multiple as an earlier Hoover movie, here's the opening it would need to reach $100 million:

Read it like this: if Verity plays like the weakest of Hoover's earlier movies, it needs about a $20.5 million opening. The forecast floors are $19 million, $20 million and $30 million, so at the very bottom of the range it would land right around that toughest line, and everywhere else it clears all three. That's why I keep saying opening weekend is the easy part.

There's a catch, and it's a big one: this assumes a Hoover thriller behaves like a Hoover romance, and it might not. Twisty thrillers with secrets can run on a completely different curve. Last December, The Housemaid opened to about $19 million and went on to roughly $388 million worldwide, a multiple of around 20x. I'm not predicting that for Verity. I'm saying the ceiling is higher than the Hoover ledger suggests, and the floor is lower if the word of mouth turns sour. Both of those things get decided in the second weekend.

Verity vs. Digger: whose weekend is it?

Both movies open the same Friday, and both are forecast in roughly the same neighborhood. In my Digger piece I laid out trackers that have Tom Cruise's satirical comedy anywhere from about $12 million to $30 million. SlashFilm's preview gave Verity the edge, and I lean the same way, but only slightly: my hunch is Verity opens a few million dollars ahead. That's a guess, and Digger's range is wide.

What I don't buy is the idea that they're fighting each other. One is a black comedy about an oil tycoon who causes a disaster and tries to cast himself as the hero. The other is a psychological thriller about a ghostwriter in a house full of secrets. I'd bet very few people are choosing between them. If anything, having two very different movies for grown-ups on the same weekend is good news for theaters. The domestic box office is already at about $7.8 billion this year, per Gold Derby, and an analyst told Variety in March that the audience for adult romance dramas is there but the supply isn't. Verity lands right in that gap.

My verdict before I've seen it: why I'm rooting for Verity

Three reasons I'm on board:

• It's a real swing, and I like swings. A $40 million R-rated thriller from an author whose movies had all been PG-13 romances is a risk. SlashFilm's take is that Amazon is committing to theatrical releases in a serious way now, and this looks like an example.
• Hathaway's year is remarkable. This is her fifth movie of 2026, after Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2 (about $693 million worldwide), The Odyssey (over $1.7 billion) and The End of Oak Street. I can't think of a more impressive stretch this year, and it hasn't hurt that people are curious what she does as Verity.
• It fills a gap. Grown-up, female-led thrillers that aren't sequels don't come along that often. If it works, we'll see more of them.

Three things that worry me:

• Book fans grade on a curve. The early reactions show viewers comparing the movie to the book, and Hoover herself teased in March that audiences might be surprised. Surprise can be great or a disaster, depending on who's in the seat.
• The R rating trims the audience. That's my guess, not a fact from the trackers, but the earlier Hoover movies were all PG-13.
• The tone might split people. Some early viewers wanted more pulp and some wanted more polish. If the crowd Friday night isn't sure which movie it saw, the second weekend could be rough.

What would change my mind: Thursday night preview numbers, the CinemaScore, the first Rotten Tomatoes score, and most of all how much the Saturday and Sunday grosses drop from Friday.

Should you read the book before you see Verity?

It's one of the most common questions I'm seeing, so here's my honest answer, without spoilers. It depends on what kind of moviegoer you are:

If I were choosing, I'd go in cold. Hathaway told an interviewer that her dad had to stop listening to the audiobook, and I'll admit that made me more curious, not less.

What this means for you

• Casual moviegoer: if you like twisty thrillers, this is the one to watch this weekend. Check the Rotten Tomatoes score first if it's posted by Thursday.
• Hoover fan: expect something darker than her earlier movies. It's rated R for a reason, and the romance isn't the swoony kind.
• Box office watcher: the number to track isn't Friday's. It's the drop from Friday to Sunday, and then the second weekend.

Verity questions people keep searching

When does Verity come out?

Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, in theaters in the United States and Canada from Amazon MGM Studios. Sony Pictures Releasing International handles overseas markets, and dates vary by country.

Is Verity rated R?

Yes. The earlier Colleen Hoover movies (It Ends With Us, Regretting You and Reminders of Him) were all PG-13, according to Boxoffice Pro.

How long is Verity?

117 minutes, according to Wikipedia's listing.

Who is in the cast of Verity?

Anne Hathaway plays Verity Crawford, Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh and Josh Hartnett plays Jeremy Crawford. Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner are also in the cast.

Who directed Verity, and who wrote it?

Michael Showalter directed it, and Nick Antosca wrote the screenplay. Showalter previously directed Anne Hathaway in The Idea of You.

Is Verity based on a book?

Yes, Colleen Hoover's 2018 novel of the same name, which she self-published before Grand Central Publishing picked it up in 2021.

How much did Verity cost to make?

The budget is reported at about $40 million.

What is the Verity opening weekend box office prediction?

Forecasts range from about $19 million to $40 million domestically. Global Box Office has $19 million to $25 million, Box Office Theory has $20 million to $29 million, and Boxoffice Pro's older long-range forecast was $30 million to $40 million.

Is there a Rotten Tomatoes score for Verity yet?

Not that I could find as of Monday evening, Sept. 28. Metacritic's page also said critic reviews weren't available yet. Early reactions so far have come from social posts and Letterboxd viewers, and they're split.

Is Verity streaming?

I couldn't find a streaming date. It's a theatrical release first, opening Oct. 2.