'Verity' debuts at No. 1, giving Colleen Hoover's film franchise its best weekend since 'It Ends With Us'

"Verity" opened at No. 1 at the North American box office this weekend, giving Amazon MGM Studios its biggest live-action theatrical win of the year and handing Colleen Hoover's film franchise its best debut since 2024's "It Ends With Us." The psychological thriller, starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, pulled in an estimated $15.1 million on Friday from 3,510 theaters and is tracking toward a three-day total of roughly $33.6 million, according to studio estimates.

The result also means "Verity" easily outran the weekend's other marquee new release, Warner Bros.' Tom Cruise vehicle "Digger," which opened to just $3.4 million on Friday from 3,321 locations. Directed by Michael Showalter from a screenplay credited to Nick Antosca and Hoover herself, "Verity" is adapted from Hoover's 2018 novel about a ghostwriter who is hired to complete a bestselling author's unfinished series — and uncovers disturbing secrets along the way, according to the official film synopsis published by Amazon.

The numbers

"Verity" was produced on a modest $40 million budget, and its projected opening places it as the second-biggest launch of any Hoover adaptation to reach theaters, trailing only the $50 million debut of "It Ends With Us" in 2024. It comfortably outpaces 2025's "Regretting You," which opened to $13.6 million for Paramount, and this year's "Reminders of Him," which debuted to $17 million for Universal. Early figures tracked by Box Office Mojo put Friday's gross at $15.1 million across 3,510 North American screens, the widest release of any Hoover title to date. Critics were far less enthusiastic than audiences: "Verity" carries a 34% critics' score from more than 125 reviews, roughly in line with the reception given prior Hoover adaptations, while its audience score sits at 70%, suggesting the built-in readership of Hoover's novels showed up regardless of what reviewers thought.

• "It Ends With Us" (2024, Sony) — $50 million opening, $350 million worldwide
• "Regretting You" (2025, Paramount) — $13.6 million opening
• "Reminders of Him" (2026, Universal) — $17 million opening
• "Verity" (2026, Amazon MGM) — an estimated $33.6 million opening weekend

How Hoover became a box-office fixture

The win caps a remarkable run for Hoover, the romance novelist whose backlist exploded in popularity on BookTok years after many of her titles were first published. Hollywood has chased that readership aggressively: four of her novels have now reached theaters in three years, each from a different studio, each produced on a relatively small budget that makes them low-risk bets even when reviews are poor. "Verity" itself had a bumpy road to the screen — Amazon MGM originally slated it for a May 2026 release before pushing the date back to October, and the project is Hoover's first adaptation to carry an R rating, the classification the Motion Picture Association's own ratings guide applies to films whose content skews adult, rather than PG-13, reflecting its darker, more violent source material.

For Amazon MGM, the opening is also a validation of a broader strategic bet. The studio, built from Amazon's 2022 acquisition of MGM, has been steadily ramping up its theatrical output after years of focusing primarily on streaming, and executives have talked publicly about committing roughly $1 billion a year to films built for cinemas. That bet had a rocky summer: "Masters of the Universe" flopped badly in July, grossing just $113 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. "Verity" is the studio's clearest theatrical success since the spring hit "Project Hail Mary," starring Ryan Gosling, which grossed $684 million globally.

Who's affected

The weekend's split outcome lands hardest on Warner Bros., which greenlit "Digger" at $125 million only for the Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed film to balloon to an estimated $160 million to $180 million after production ran long. A movie of that size typically needs an opening weekend in the neighborhood of $40 million to justify its cost; "Digger" is tracking toward roughly $7.5 million domestically through Sunday, a shortfall that lands just as Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, confirmed on Warner Bros. Discovery's own newsroom, is set to close. For theater chains, by contrast, "Verity" is a reminder that mid-budget adaptations with built-in fan bases can still reliably fill auditoriums, especially around Halloween-season programming.

Hathaway, who turns in her third No. 1 opening of the year after this summer's "The Devil Wears Prada 2" and "The Odyssey," also strengthens her standing as one of the more bankable stars currently working in both studio sequels and mid-budget adult dramas. For Johnson and Hartnett, the film adds another high-profile credit to résumés built partly on literary adaptations and genre thrillers.

What people are saying

Hathaway has been candid about what drew her to the project, telling interviewers she understood the novel's cult following almost immediately after reading it.

"There's so much propulsive energy to [Hoover's] books, it's like eating something really delicious and you can't quite stop yourself," Hathaway said ahead of the film's release.

Hoover, who also has an executive producer credit and a hand in the script, has been similarly effusive about Hathaway's performance in the title role. "She nailed it. Seeing all the different roles she's playing and her range, I feel like this is a great movie to cap off the year of Anne Hathaway," the author said in a recent interview. Critics were considerably less kind: Variety critic Guy Lodge described "Verity" as a "listless" and "unintentionally funny tale," an assessment echoed across much of the mixed-to-negative critical response that has defined Hoover adaptations so far.

What happens next

Final weekend grosses for "Verity" are expected to be confirmed Monday once Sunday's actuals are reported, and the real test for the film will be how steeply it drops in its second weekend — the pattern that determined whether "It Ends With Us" became a genuine global hit or whether "Regretting You" and "Reminders of Him" faded quickly after front-loaded openings. Amazon MGM has more bets on the board before the end of the year, including "I Play Rocky," a drama about the making of the original 1976 "Rocky," and the heist comedy "How to Rob a Bank" with Nicholas Hoult and Pete Davidson. With "Verity" now the most commercially successful title in Hoover's adaptation pipeline aside from "It Ends With Us," studios are likely to keep mining her backlist — and keep betting that her readership will turn out for the movies even when critics don't come along.