The Verity Trailer Is Here and Anne Hathaway Is Absolutely Terrifying
Colleen Hoover's darkest novel gets its film adaptation with Dakota Johnson as Lowen, Anne Hathaway as Verity, and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy. Amazon MGM Studios releases it October 2, 2026. The trailer is already breaking the internet.
If you watched the first trailer for Verity and immediately texted your group chat, you were not alone. Anne Hathaway biting Dakota Johnson until her mouth bleeds. A surreal sequence where a kiss with Josh Hartnett morphs into something far more unsettling. Colleen Hoover's darkest novel finally has a face, and the internet has opinions.
The trailer dropped earlier this year, and it does something the best psychological thriller trailers do: it shows you enough to disturb you and then cuts away before you understand what you just saw. That is the whole game with Verity, as a book and now as a film.
AT A GLANCE • Film: Verity (2026) • Based on: Verity by Colleen Hoover (2018) • Director: Michael Showalter • Screenplay: Nick Antosca • Lowen Ashleigh: Dakota Johnson • Verity Crawford: Anne Hathaway • Jeremy Crawford: Josh Hartnett • Supporting cast: Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko, K.K. Moggie, Michael Abbott Jr. • Studio: Amazon MGM Studios • Release date: October 2, 2026 (US and Canada) • Filming: February to April 2025, New York City |
What Verity Is About
The novel came out in 2018 and built a quiet, devoted following before BookTok turned it into required reading. For anyone who missed it: Lowen Ashleigh is a broke, struggling writer who gets a lifeline when bestselling author Verity Crawford's husband Jeremy hires her to complete Verity's unfinished book series. Verity was left unable to work following a mysterious accident, and Lowen is brought in to finish what she started.
Lowen moves into the Crawford home and while going through Verity's old files, finds an unpublished manuscript that reads like a confession. What follows is one of the more divisive endings in modern fiction, one that forces readers to decide what they believe and then live with it.
The film is going to have to pick a side. That alone is worth the price of a ticket.
The Cast and Why It Works
Dakota Johnson plays Lowen. It is a considered choice. She has a particular talent for playing women who are watchful and quietly overwhelmed, which is exactly the register this story needs.
Anne Hathaway plays Verity. The casting nobody expected and everybody needed. The trailer shows her delivering a single line with a stillness that is more disturbing than any scream. She barely moves and still owns every frame she is in.
Josh Hartnett plays Jeremy, the husband caught between two women and two versions of a truth he cannot fully know. The supporting cast includes Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brady Wagner, Irina Dvorovenko, K.K. Moggie, and Michael Abbott Jr.
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The Team Behind It
Director Michael Showalter and screenwriter Nick Antosca are handling the adaptation. Antosca's previous work on The Act and Channel Zero shows a real understanding of how to adapt deeply uncomfortable material without softening it into something it is not. That pedigree matters here.
Principal photography ran from February to April 2025, shooting on location in New York City. Amazon MGM Studios is distributing.
Release Date
October 2, 2026, in theaters across the United States and Canada.
What This Means for the CoHo Universe
Verity is not a typical Colleen Hoover novel. It is darker, colder, and more structurally ambitious than the romance books that made her name. The fact that Amazon chose it for a major theatrical release signals confidence that CoHo's audience is broader than the BookTok lane she is usually placed in.
It also puts pressure on whatever film adaptation of It Ends With Us is tracking. Verity is going to set a benchmark. If the trailer reception is any indication, the film has real awards season potential.
WHAT WRITERS CAN TAKE FROM THIS • Verity works because Hoover built two completely different versions of the same character and made both of them believable. That psychological layering requires intentional, documented character work. • The adaptation had to choose one interpretation of the ending. The choice a screenwriter makes when the source material is deliberately ambiguous is one of the most revealing decisions in adaptation. • Nick Antosca's background in psychological horror television made him a sharp choice for this material. Matching the adapter's sensibility to the source matters more than credits. • A single line of dialogue in a trailer can do the work of an entire marketing campaign if the casting and delivery are right. • Verity reaching theaters confirms that CoHo readers are not a niche audience. They are a mainstream one. |
Verity works as a novel because every detail about Verity Crawford is precisely tracked. Her history, her contradictions, her hidden logic all have to hold up under scrutiny or the ending falls apart. If you are writing a character with that kind of psychological complexity, WriteO's Character Management lets you map motivations, track backstory, and manage every layer of who a character is across your full manuscript so nothing slips through the cracks.
Sources: Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, IndieWire, Brit + Co, Amazon About Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia (Verity film), MovieInsider