Colleen Hoover's 'Verity' Is on Track for a No. 1 Opening as the Critics-and-Readers Split Persists

Colleen Hoover's Verity is projected to open at No. 1 in North America this weekend with a domestic debut of $30 million or more, even as the adaptation arrived to another round of hostile reviews. The film, directed by Michael Showalter from a screenplay by Nick Antosca, reached theaters in the United States and Canada on October 2, 2026, after previews that began at 2 p.m. Eastern on October 1 and brought in $4.5 million.

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That $4.5 million figure comes from Deadline and includes early-access screenings, so it is a confirmed measure of opening-night interest rather than a result. The weekend is a separate question. Deadline put the three-day outlook at $30 million-plus, and Variety projected $30 million to $35 million from 3,510 theaters. Both are estimates. The actual gross will not be known until studio estimates arrive on Sunday and final figures on Monday.

What is already clear is the shape of the release: a heavily pre-sold adaptation of a best-selling novel, carrying a mid-sized budget and a divisive critical reception, heading for the top of a soft frame. That combination says as much about the audience Hoover has built as it does about the film itself.

What "Verity" is

Verity adapts Hoover's 2018 novel of the same name, a psychological thriller with erotic elements that became one of her best-known titles. The plot centers on Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish a celebrated author's book series, who finds a disturbing manuscript inside the author's home.

The cast pairs Anne Hathaway as the novelist Verity Crawford with Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, and Josh Hartnett as Verity's husband, Jeremy Crawford. Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner also appear, according to Wikipedia. The film runs 117 minutes and was made for a reported budget of $40 million.

Amazon MGM Studios produced the film and distributes it in North America, while Sony Pictures Releasing International handles overseas markets. The production credits include Antosca, Alex Hedlund, Stacey Sher, Showalter, Jordana Mollick, and both Hathaway and Hoover.

The rollout was built to create anticipation. The world premiere took place on September 24, 2026, at the Curzon Mayfair in London, and the North American release followed on October 2. The film had originally been slated for May 15, 2026. It is also set to screen in the Gala section of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival in late October.

The gap the franchise keeps producing

Verity is the latest test of a pattern that has followed nearly every Hoover adaptation: critics reject the films while the readers who show up rate them warmly. The early numbers for this one fit the mold.

On Rotten Tomatoes, 39 percent of 94 critics' reviews were positive as of publication, with an average rating of 5.10 out of 10. Metacritic sat at 45 out of 100 from 28 critics, a score the site labels "mixed or average."

Those headline scores hide a split within the critical response. RogerEbert.com gave the film 3 out of 4; Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that it is "wickedly playful" and gives its central performers plenty of chances to show off their technique. Time Out also landed at 3 out of 5, and The Boston Globe at 2.5 out of 5, according to the review aggregators. On the other side, The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw was negative, and The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey called the film a second-rate "The Housemaid."

The audience side has been more consistent, and it is the reason the projections matter. Regretting You scored 29 percent with critics and 83 percent with audiences; It Ends with Us 55 percent and 87 percent; Reminders of Him 56 percent and 87 percent. Deadline noted that audience scores on Hoover films have tended to "outshine the critics." Those gaps are large enough that a low critic score has stopped functioning as a reliable predictor of turnout for this particular author.

There is a straightforward explanation. Hoover's readership is built, loyal and largely female, and those readers arrive with the plot and the emotional beats already in mind. A film that satisfies them can post a strong opening even when reviewers describe it as uneven. The marketing for Verity leaned on that recognition, selling Hathaway's performance and the novel's central mystery rather than trying to win over skeptics.

Audience scores are the figure the franchise watches most closely, because they point to how a film holds. One that opens on curiosity and then falls sharply tends to disappoint; one that holds has usually earned a recommendation. Hoover's earlier adaptations have shown the pattern from the audience side, with scores in the mid-80s even when critic scores sat below 60 percent. If Verity follows that pattern, its second-weekend drop will be the first real evidence. If it does not, the opening may be the high-water mark.

Why the opening is still a win

Set the critical reaction aside and the commercial setup looks favorable on two counts.

The first is the comparison to the franchise's own recent history. It Ends with Us opened to $50 million in August 2024 after $7 million in previews. Reminders of Him opened to $17.9 million after $1.9 million. Verity's $4.5 million previews sit between the two, closer to It Ends with Us, and the projected weekend is roughly in line with the stronger of the earlier films. Against a reported $40 million budget, a $30 million-plus domestic start, plus an overseas launch Deadline projected at $55 million-plus worldwide, is a solid return for a standalone adult thriller.

The second is star power. Variety noted that a No. 1 opening would make Verity Hathaway's third chart-topping film of 2026, after The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Odyssey. The streak gives the film a name above the title that does not depend on a franchise.

The film also comes with a curiosity hook that Variety reported on October 2: the story had a darker ending that was changed after focus-group screenings. Whether that change helps or hurts with the novel's devoted readers is one of the more interesting open questions of the weekend, and it is exactly the kind of detail that can drive word of mouth in either direction.

One caveat on the celebrity framing: Town & Country described Hathaway's Verity premiere as her final red carpet appearance of 2026. That is a description of her schedule, not a verdict on the film, and it should not be read as one.

The weekend's other big bet: "Digger"

The more revealing number this weekend may belong to a different film. Digger, the Tom Cruise-led satire from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, drew $1.2 million in previews and was expected to open north of only about $10 million in North America, per Deadline.

That is a weak result for a film whose budget was reported at $125 million to $160 million-plus. A Tom Cruise release opening near $10 million would be a notable stumble, and the contrast with Verity is the story of the weekend: the adaptation with the worse reviews is poised to open several times higher than the star-driven original with the bigger price tag.

One frame settles little. Digger is a satirical, director-driven project with a divisive premise, not a conventional Cruise action vehicle, and its marketing asks audiences to accept a version of the star they may not want. Still, the pairing illustrates how the 2026 market rewards built-in readership and known stories over name recognition alone.

For context, the previous weekend's top five, per Deadline, were Resident Evil at $32.1 million in its second week ($112.3 million total), Avengers: Endgame Encore at $31.8 million ($890.1 million lifetime), Heart of the Beast at $27.3 million in its debut, A24's Primetime at $25.1 million in its debut, and Forgotten Island at $16.4 million in its debut. Those numbers show what a full frame looks like, and they frame how modest this weekend is by comparison.

Caveats: what the projections do not settle

Several things are unknown, and they matter more than the early projections.

The first is the actual weekend gross. Preview-heavy films can front-load, and a $4.5 million Thursday does not guarantee a $30 million weekend if Friday and Saturday soften. The projection could be high or low; only Monday's actuals will settle it.

The second is the audience score. The critic numbers are published and the projection is an industry estimate, but no audience polling for Verity was available at publication. The franchise's history suggests audiences will rate it higher than critics did, but that is a pattern, not a fact about this film.

The third is the international rollout. Amazon MGM is distributing domestically while Sony handles overseas, and Deadline's $55 million-plus worldwide projection is an early estimate. The film's international shape will become clearer over the next two weekends, and the Tokyo festival slot in late October could give it a second marketing push.

The final question is what the result means for Hoover's pipeline. If Verity opens at or above projections, studios get more evidence that the readership alone can carry an adaptation through bad reviews. If it undershoots, the lesson may be narrower: that Hoover's audience shows up for her most famous titles and not for every one. Either way, one weekend will not settle it.

A $40 million adaptation of a best-selling novel opened on October 2 after $4.5 million in previews and is projected to lead the domestic chart with $30 million or more. The weekend's actuals arrive Monday.

Cover: Anne Hathaway in April 2026, before the release of "Verity." Photo by the Republic of Korea via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.