Colleen Hoover's 'Verity' Tops Box Office Despite Critics' 34% Rating

Hollywood has been running the Colleen Hoover equation for two years now: take a BookTok-beloved novel, attach a recognizable cast, keep the budget tight, and watch devoted readers fill seats regardless of what reviewers say. 'Verity' is the latest proof of concept, and the numbers are blunt about it.

Directed by Michael Showalter and written by Nick Antosca, the film stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett in an erotic psychological thriller adapted from Hoover's novel of the same name. According to Deadline, it scored a $62.1 million global opening weekend, the second-best debut ever for a Hoover adaptation, trailing only 'It Ends With Us,' which opened to around $50 million domestically alone in 2024.

The catch, and it's a significant one, is that critics were not along for the ride. Per Screen Rant, 'Verity' carries a 34% Rotten Tomatoes critics' score, making it the worst-reviewed Hoover adaptation so far. The CinemaScore landed at C+, also the lowest of the bunch, as noted by Comic Basics. Audiences, though, were warmer, a 70% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and 78 to 79 percent of that opening-weekend crowd was women, per Comic Basics. That's the CoHo base, showing up loyal and organized.

The Archyde entertainment desk reported that by its third week, 'Verity' had crossed $115 million worldwide, even as it shed 500 theaters after debuting in more than 3,500 locations. On a $40 million production budget, the highest of any Hoover adaptation so far, per Screen Rant, those returns represent a clean profit, and Variety apparently told Amazon MGM to expect it.

What's interesting here isn't just the box office math. It's what 'Verity' tells us about how the publishing economy now pipes directly into the film economy. Hoover's earlier adaptations, 'Regretting You' opened to $13.6 million, 'Reminders of Him' to $17.9 million, were respectable but modest. 'It Ends With Us' was different: it got a boost from a very public and very messy dispute between Blake Lively and director-star Justin Baldoni that turned discourse into free marketing. 'Verity' didn't have that drama fuel and still outperformed those mid-tier entries by a wide margin.

Hoover's readers are not casual consumers. They are a community, and they move as one. The film is her fourth to reach theaters, and as the Washington College student paper The Elm noted in its review, it's also the fourth with a number-one debut to its credit. The tagline, 'There is no light where we're going,' apparently landed with exactly the audience it was aimed at.

The critical reception is still worth talking about, though. Showalter directed 'The Idea of You' to considerably better reviews last year, and Antosca has serious horror credentials with 'Channel Zero.' The ingredients looked right. The result, by critics' lights, didn't cohere. At what point does Amazon MGM care? At $115 million against a $40 million budget, probably not much.

What this keeps demonstrating is that the BookTok-to-box-office pipeline has its own separate critical infrastructure, one that lives in reading vlogs, fan edits, and group chats, and doesn't check Rotten Tomatoes before buying a ticket. That's not a knock. It's just the shape of the current reading economy, and it's more durable than a lot of people in legacy criticism want to admit. 'Verity' is a mediocre movie that is doing fine. The audience decided that was enough.

Sources cited:
- Deadline (https://deadline.com/2026/10/box-office-global-verity-digger-1237146180/)
- Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/verity-box-office-opening-weekend-domestic-result/)
- Comic Basics (https://www.comicbasics.com/verity-tops-the-box-office-despite-brutal-reviews-and-a-rough-cinemascore/)
- Archyde (https://www.archyde.com/colleen-hoovers-verity-crosses-115-million-at-worldwide-box-office/)
- The Elm (Washington College) (https://blog.washcoll.edu/wordpress/theelm/2026/10/verity-achieves-number-one-in-box-office-debut-but-falls-flat-in-ratings/)
- Variety (https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/verity-box-office-opening-weekend-projection-1236893670/)