Trust no one, especially the author.

Reuniting with Anne Hathaway after their romance-drama hit The Idea of You, director Michael Showalter trades warmth for menace with Verity, sailing into Everyman on 2 October 2026. Adapted from Colleen Hoover's self-published sensation of a novel by screenwriter Nick Antosca, it's the fourth of her books to reach the big screen following It Ends With Us, Regretting You and Reminders of Him, and arrives with a script steeped in the kind of glossy, morally slippery thrillers that dominated cinemas in the late eighties and early nineties.

The story follows Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer whose agent Corey (Ismael Cruz Córdova) talks her into a career-saving deal: ghostwriting the final instalment of a bestselling series for its author, Verity Crawford (Hathaway), who can no longer finish it after a devastating accident leaves her incapacitated.

Moving into the Crawfords' isolated estate, where husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and young son Crew (Brady Wagner) are still reeling from a family tragedy, Lowen instead uncovers what looks like a chillingly candid, unfinished manuscript: one that reads less like a novel and more like a confession. 

As she grows closer to Jeremy, the line between empathy and obsession starts to blur, and every page Lowen turns makes it harder to tell whether Verity is a victim, a manipulator, or something far more calculating. 

Composer Volker Bertelmann, fresh from his Oscar win for All Quiet on the Western Front, supplies the score, lending the Crawfords' house the kind of unease that lingers long after the credits. Expect a slow-burn, hothouse tension that thrives on suspicion rather than jump scares, the sort of psychological unravelling where you'll question every character's motives right up to the final page.

Did you know?

Verity marks the second collaboration between Hathaway and Showalter after 2024's The Idea of You, a reunion that swaps that film's tender pop-star romance for something considerably darker and more twisted.

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