BookTok Sends Two More Adaptations to Amazon in One Week

Amazon MGM Studios spent the last week of September doing something that would have seemed implausible five years ago: dropping one BookTok adaptation on Prime Video while another one opens in theaters four days later. The first is 'The Love Hypothesis,' Ali Hazelwood's STEM fake-dating romance, which landed on Prime Video on September 23. The second is 'Verity,' Colleen Hoover's psychological thriller, which goes wide on October 2. Two very different books, two very different tones, one studio making an unmistakable bet on the platform-shaped reading economy.

Start with 'The Love Hypothesis,' because its origin story is still wild to say out loud. As Vulture has reported, Hazelwood's agent approached her after she'd been writing Reylo fanfiction, and the finished novel, which swaps Kylo Ren and Rey for a biology Ph.D. candidate and her famously grumpy professor, spent 40 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, according to Marie Claire. That's the kind of number that gets a movie greenlit. The adaptation stars Lili Reinhart, who also serves as an executive producer, alongside Tom Bateman as the impossibly intimidating Dr. Adam Carlsen. Claire Scanlon, who directed 'Set It Up,' helms the film; Sarah Rothschild wrote the screenplay, per Deadline.

The reader community has been vocal, and that's where it gets interesting. Slate ran a piece this week pointing out that Hazelwood's novels are known for being, let's say, frank, and that what Prime Video delivered is something considerably more restrained. According to Slate, the adaptation gives fans something that barely qualifies as physical intimacy across its nearly two-hour runtime. That's a real creative choice, and it's not a neutral one. Readers who found the book in the first place because it made them blush on public transit are going to notice.

Then there's 'Verity,' which is a different beast entirely. Hoover's psychological thriller is not cozy or grumpy-sunshine anything. It's the one that keeps you up wondering whether what you just read actually happened. The film, directed by Michael Showalter from a screenplay by Nick Antosca, stars Anne Hathaway as the incapacitated author Verity Crawford and Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, the struggling writer hired to ghostwrite Verity's final novel, according to Amazon's own press materials. Josh Hartnett plays the husband, and the whole arrangement tilts into something considerably darker once Lowen finds an unfinished manuscript on the premises, per Deadline's trailer coverage.

The Showalter-Hathaway pairing is worth noting: they worked together on 'The Idea of You,' another book adaptation, which means this isn't their first time figuring out how to make literary sentiment translate on screen. Hoover herself is a producer here, alongside Hathaway, which should tell you something about the level of creative control the author maintained after the 'It Ends With Us' rollout complicated things for everyone involved. As Grazia noted, 'Verity' arrives as a deliberately more dangerous next move from Hoover, with colder material than anything she's sent to screens before.

The Boston Globe, reviewing ahead of the Oct. 2 release, found the film 'shockingly watchable,' which is the kind of qualified praise that actually means something for an adaptation of a book this divisive. Rotten Tomatoes early critics have been mixed, with one noting that the film improves on its source material but still leaves you without a character to root for.

What both films share is a machine behind them. Amazon MGM Studios has optioned multiple Hazelwood titles; 'Love, Theoretically' is already in development, per Deadline. Hoover's catalog has been feeding Hollywood for years. The platform-shaped reading economy doesn't just find audiences for books. It finds studios a pre-sold marketing department of millions of readers who already know the characters' names and have opinions about the casting. The question now is whether the movies can hold an audience that didn't come for the movie at all.

Sources cited:
- Deadline (https://deadline.com/lists/ali-hazelwood-books-to-movies-adaptations/)
- Slate (https://slate.com/culture/2026/09/the-love-hypothesis-movie-prime-video-book-ali-hazelwood-lili-reinhart-tom-bateman-sex-scenes.html)
- Marie Claire (https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/movies/the-love-hypothesis-ali-hazelwood-movie/)
- Deadline (Verity trailer) (https://deadline.com/2026/08/verity-trailer-anne-hathaway-dakota-johnson-amazon-mgm-1236873939/)
- Boston Globe (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/30/arts/verity-anne-hathaway/)
- Grazia (https://graziamagazine.com/us/articles/verity-movie-anne-hathaway-dakota-johnson-colleen-hoover/)
- About Amazon (Verity press page) (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/verity-colleen-hoover-amazon-mgm-studios)
- Rotten Tomatoes (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/verity)