NEW Verity Trailer Starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson

I had more or less written off Colleen Hoover movies, but Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett showed up in the trailer for Verity looking deeply suspicious, and now I’m annoyingly on board.

I’ve read exactly one Colleen Hoover book, It Ends With Us, and that was enough to decide she and I weren’t meant for a long literary relationship. No hard feelings. Millions of readers clearly disagree with me. We can all go about our lives.

I was more open to the It Ends With Us movie, especially with Blake Lively in the lead. Then came the drama between Lively and director/co-star Justin Baldoni, and the whole project started to feel a little icky by association.

So when I heard Hollywood was going back for another round of Colleen Hoover, my reaction was basically: good luck with that.

Then I watched the new Verity trailer.

So, What Is Verity About?

Unlike It Ends With Us, Verity is a straight-up psychological thriller, which already gives it a head start with me.

Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish a bestselling book series after its author, Verity Crawford, is left unable to write following an accident. Lowen relocates to the Crawford estate to work through Verity’s notes, because apparently nobody in a psychological thriller has ever considered doing this job remotely from a nice Holiday Inn.

There she finds a manuscript she probably wasn’t supposed to find. It’s disturbing, autobiographical, and possibly revealing what really happened inside the Crawford family.

Verity’s husband, Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett, is right there for all of it.

This Cast Is Doing a Lot of the Heavy Lifting

Anne Hathaway plays Verity, and the trailer lets her be glamorous, eerie, seductive, and possibly completely unhinged. Her best line might be, “There is no light where we’re going.” This is either a threat or a deeply strange thing to say to your ghostwriter. I’m in either way.

Dakota Johnson has exactly the cool, slightly detached energy that works for someone slowly realizing she’s wandered into a very dangerous situation.

And Josh Hartnett? Look, I’m only human.

Put the three of them in an enormous, shadowy house where nobody trusts anybody and everyone is making questionable romantic decisions, and my carefully constructed Colleen Hoover resistance starts falling apart.

Verity is directed by Michael Showalter, who previously worked with Hathaway on another book adaptation, The Idea of You, and it hits theaters October 2.

Am I Actually Going to Watch This?

Probably, yes.

I haven’t read the book, so I’m going in completely blind. No twists spoiled, no idea who’s telling the truth, no sense of what the built-in fan base is already bracing for. For once, skipping the source material might actually work in my favor.

I’m not promising this movie will convince me I’ve been unfair to Colleen Hoover. And I’m definitely not promising I’ll pick up the book afterward. Let’s not get carried away.

Verity arrives in theaters October 2, 2026. Watch the trailer below: