Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson Face a Twisted Truth in Verity Trailer
Colleen Hoover’s Verity is heading to the big screen this October, and the newly released official trailer offers our clearest look yet at what could be one of the darker mainstream thrillers of 2026.
Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett lead Amazon MGM Studios’ adaptation of Hoover’s bestselling novel, with Verity arriving in cinemas on October 2, 2026. The new trailer leans heavily into the psychological uncertainty at the centre of the story, where a seemingly straightforward ghostwriting assignment gradually develops into something considerably more disturbing.
For readers of Hoover’s novel, that’s precisely where the appeal lies. Verity isn’t simply a mystery about discovering what somebody has done. It is a story about whether the evidence being presented can actually be trusted, and what happens when attraction, grief, ambition and manipulation begin contaminating the search for the truth.
You can watch the official trailer for Verity below.
What Is Verity About?
Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who is presented with an opportunity capable of transforming her career. Bestselling author Verity Crawford, played by Anne Hathaway, has been left unable to continue her successful book series, and Lowen is hired to step into her place as a ghostwriter.
The arrangement brings Lowen into the Crawford home, where she is expected to work through Verity’s extensive notes and unfinished material. She also finds herself increasingly drawn into the lives of Verity’s husband Jeremy Crawford, played by Josh Hartnett, and the rest of a family already marked by tragedy.
Then Lowen discovers something she wasn’t supposed to find.
Hidden among Verity’s material is what appears to be an unfinished autobiographical manuscript containing horrifying claims about the Crawford family. What initially appeared to be a professional assignment suddenly becomes something much more dangerous as Lowen attempts to determine whether she has discovered a piece of fiction, a confession, or something deliberately designed to blur the distinction between the two. Amazon MGM’s synopsis describes Lowen struggling to separate “fiction from reality” as the material she uncovers draws her further into Verity and Jeremy’s relationship.
Complicating everything is Lowen’s growing attraction to Jeremy. She isn’t examining the Crawford family from a safe distance; she’s becoming emotionally involved with it. The more time she spends inside the house, the harder it becomes to know whether she’s uncovering Verity’s secrets or becoming another participant in them.
That makes Verity a particularly interesting proposition for a screen adaptation. The central mystery isn’t simply what happened? It’s whose version of what happened do you believe?
From Colleen Hoover Bestseller to the Big Screen
Verity was originally self-published by Colleen Hoover in December 2018, before its growing popularity led to a subsequent traditional publishing release. Hachette’s current editions describe the novel as a major word-of-mouth success, and it went on to win Pageturner of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2023.
It also represented something different for an author primarily associated with romance. Hoover took elements of relationships, desire and emotional obsession and placed them within the structure of a psychological suspense story. Rather than abandoning romance altogether, Verity makes attraction part of its danger.
Lowen enters the Crawford home as an outsider, but the boundaries rapidly collapse. The professional relationship with Jeremy becomes increasingly personal, while her fascination with Verity grows alongside her fear of what the incapacitated author may have done. Hoover then uses the manuscript Lowen discovers to destabilise the reader’s understanding of virtually everyone involved.
The novel’s enormous popularity also means the film faces the familiar problem confronting any adaptation of a book built around major revelations. Readers already know where the story might be heading, while newcomers need to experience its discoveries without the marketing campaign giving away too much.
Thankfully, Verity has plenty to work with beyond its twists.
The isolated Crawford home, the increasingly uncomfortable relationship between Lowen and Jeremy, Verity’s apparently helpless presence and the manuscript itself provide the ingredients for a claustrophobic psychological thriller in which almost every character has reason to distrust somebody else.
Anne Hathaway Becomes Verity Crawford
Perhaps the most intriguing piece of casting is Anne Hathaway as Verity.
The role requires considerably more than simply playing an obviously sinister figure. The entire premise depends upon uncertainty surrounding Verity and the competing interpretations of her behaviour. Lowen begins constructing an image of this woman through written words, family history and what she believes she’s observing inside the Crawford home.
Is Verity the person described in the manuscript? Is Lowen interpreting events correctly? How much does Lowen want to believe because of her feelings towards Jeremy? Those questions are essential to the story.
Hathaway is also producing the film through Somewhere Pictures, giving her an involvement extending beyond her starring role. Dakota Johnson, meanwhile, serves as an executive producer in addition to playing Lowen. The principal cast also includes Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner, with Wagner playing Crew Crawford.
Hartnett’s casting as Jeremy is equally important because the character occupies the point at which the story’s romantic and psychological elements collide. Lowen isn’t simply investigating Verity; she is becoming attracted to Verity’s husband while living inside their home. Every new revelation therefore potentially benefits Lowen personally, making her own objectivity increasingly questionable.
Michael Showalter Takes Verity Somewhere Darker
Behind the camera is Michael Showalter, whose career makes Verity an interesting change of territory.
Showalter’s directing credits include The Big Sick, The Eyes of Tammy Faye and The Idea of You, the latter of which also starred Hathaway. Here, he’s moving into considerably darker psychological material, although the relationship-driven foundations of Verity mean the film isn’t completely disconnected from his previous work.
The screenplay comes from Nick Antosca, whose genre credentials include Hannibal, Channel Zero and Antlers. Antosca also produces alongside Alex Hedlund, while Showalter and Jordana Mollick produce through Semi-Formal Productions. Other producers include Hathaway, Hoover and Stacey Sher, with Johnson, Kerry Orent and Lauren Levine serving as executive producers.
That combination of filmmakers is particularly promising for material that has to balance erotic tension, domestic drama and psychological horror without allowing any one element to overwhelm the others.
A Story Where the Ending Changes Everything
We’re deliberately not going to reveal the novel’s major late-story developments here because Verity is one of those adaptations where explaining too much would effectively dismantle the experience for anyone approaching the story for the first time.
What can safely be said is that Hoover constructed the novel around the unreliability of written confession.
Lowen believes she has discovered something capable of completely changing how Jeremy sees his wife. But Verity continually asks whether written words constitute evidence simply because somebody has presented them as truth. A writer, after all, makes a living inventing convincing people and events.
And Verity contains two writers.
That’s what gives the premise more bite than a straightforward domestic thriller. Lowen and Verity both understand storytelling. They understand perspective, manipulation, character and the ability of carefully selected words to influence what another person believes. By the time the story reaches its final stages, determining what actually constitutes “truth” becomes considerably more complicated than finding a hidden document and reading it.
The book’s ending has consequently generated plenty of discussion among readers, something acknowledged by later editions of the novel. A 2022 collector’s edition even included an additional chapter, giving established readers further material to debate.
How closely Showalter and Antosca ultimately follow every aspect of Hoover’s ending remains something audiences will have to discover in October.
Colleen Hoover Continues Her Move Into Cinema
Verity also arrives as Hoover’s work continues making the transition from publishing phenomenon to screen property.
Her novel It Ends with Us was adapted into a feature film released in 2024, and Verity represents a very different side of her writing. Amazon itself has highlighted that distinction when promoting the new adaptation, describing the movie as a psychological thriller centred around Lowen’s discovery of the manuscript and the secrets contained within it.
For horror and thriller audiences who may not ordinarily associate Hoover’s name with genre material, Verity is therefore the adaptation worth watching closely. The novel contains obsession, death, sexuality, manipulation and an increasingly oppressive sense that something inside the Crawford home is very wrong. The film has also received an R rating in the United States, with the classification covering sexual content, nudity, language, violence and bloody images.
More importantly, the new trailer suggests the filmmakers aren’t attempting to disguise the darkness of the source material. The seductive elements are present, but so is the menace surrounding Verity herself and Lowen’s growing inability to understand exactly what she has walked into.
With Anne Hathaway as Verity Crawford, Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh and Josh Hartnett as Jeremy, there’s plenty of talent at the centre of that increasingly poisonous triangle.
And if you’ve never read the novel, this might be one occasion where avoiding spoilers between now and October would be a very good idea.
Verity opens in cinemas on October 2, 2026.
