Colleen Hoover Tops a Crowded Weekend
Summary
Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett powered the $32.6 million opening past Resident Evil, Heart of the Beast and Primetime, continuing Hoover's now-familiar pattern of weak reviews and strong book-fan turnout
Amazon MGM's Verity, adapted from Colleen Hoover's 2018 thriller, won the October 2-4 weekend with an estimated $32.6 million from 3,510 theaters, exceeding pre-release tracking and marking Anne Hathaway's third number-one box office debut of 2026, according to Box Office Mojo, The Numbers and trade coverage. The film grossed $15.1 million on opening day alone, including $4.5 million in Thursday previews. Resident Evil held second place, falling 46 percent in its third weekend to $12.5 million and crossing $124.9 million domestic. Paramount's Heart of the Beast took third with $11 million, down 45 percent, while A24's Primetime continued in fourth with $8 million, down 58 percent and now at $34.1 million domestic after two weeks. Avengers: Endgame Encore fell 83 percent in its second weekend to $4.4 million, pushing its lifetime domestic total past $894 million. Despite Verity's strong turnout, the film carries a C+ CinemaScore, continuing a familiar pattern for Hoover adaptations: 2024's It Ends With Us opened to $50 million and ran to $148.5 million domestic despite similarly mixed critical reception. Director Michael Showalter adapted the R-rated thriller from a screenplay by Nick Antosca, starring Hathaway as the title character, Dakota Johnson as ghostwriter Lowen Ashleigh, and Josh Hartnett as Verity's husband Jeremy. With a reported $40 million budget, the opening puts the film on track for a solid profit even with the steep decline box office analysts widely expect once Hoover's existing readership has turned out.
The Kinolime Lens
A C+ CinemaScore paired with a $33 million opening is the clearest possible evidence that Hoover's adaptations now function less like conventional films and more like event merchandise for an existing fanbase, where the book's built-in audience, not the finished movie's quality, is what studios are actually buying when they option her work. For any producer weighing whether to option a bestselling novel versus an original script, the real lesson of the Hoover pattern is that an author's existing readership can be worth more at the box office than critical reception, provided the fanbase is large and devoted enough to show up opening weekend regardless of reviews.