Everything You Want To Know About Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson's 'Verity'

Verity is a 2018 psychological thriller written by Colleen Hoover. It’s being turned into a movie by Amazon Studios. Here’s everything you need to know.

What Is Verity?

It’s a book. A really intense book. A book that will make you question everything, except why Colleen Hoover’s name is everywhere. I have never read Verity. I have no desire to read Verity. And yet, I cannot escape either Verity or Colleen Hoover.

Goodreads used to be a decent place to find book recommendations. Now, half the trending books at any given time are Colleen Hoover titles, including Verity. How am I supposed to find a goddamn four-star Goodreads novel about middle-aged college professors and their extramarital affairs when the entire system is being gummed up by Colleen Hoover—an author whose prose reads like Stephenie Meyer’s fan fiction?

I tried to read a Colleen Hoover book once because I could not escape her. It was unreadable.

Verity is not a good book, but it’s popular. Millions more will read it because it’s being made into a movie, and people like to read popular things. Most of these people will lie and say they loved Verity. But then they’ll take their closest book group friend aside—the one who can barely contain her eye-rolls—and whisper under their breath, “This book is shit. What is wrong with these people?”

What’s Verity About?

Just the most rubbish shit ever.

Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer. Jeremy Crawford hires her to finish three manuscripts that his wife, Verity Crawford, couldn’t finish because she was paralyzed in a car accident.

OK, first off: Lowen and Verity? These aren’t names. They’re discontinued Procter & Gamble products.

Anyway, Lowen gets to work on the unfinished manuscripts, but one of them is full of confessions—ones she decides not to share with Jeremy, even though they basically reveal that Verity killed their two children and suggest she might not actually be paralyzed.

Meanwhile, Lowen falls hard for Jeremy, and the deeper she falls, the more she wonders if she should tell him about the manuscript. Eventually, she does. And then—spoilers—Jeremy murders Verity and makes it look like a seizure.

Months later, after Lowen and Jeremy get together, Lowen discovers a hidden letter written by Verity. The letter claims that everything in the manuscript was just a writing exercise, not real, and that Verity faked her paralysis because she was afraid of Jeremy’s rage.

The ending is ambiguous. The reader is left wondering: Is the manuscript true, or is the secret letter the truth? And more importantly: Who the hell has Lowen shacked up with?

It’s cartoonish melodrama.

Who Is Directing Verity?

Michael Showalter.

Wait, WHAT? The Michael Showalter? The Wet Hot American Summer guy? The sketch comedy guy from The State?

Yeah, that guy!

That makes no sense!

Actually, weirdly, it does. He was once best known for absurdist comedy, but he pivoted hard when he directed Kumail Nanjiani’s pretty wonderful The Big Sick. He still does absurdist comedy (see: Search Party, which he co-created), but his last movie was The Idea of You—that fairly decent film where Anne Hathaway hooks up with a boy-band dude.

Tackling Verity extends that half of Showalter’s brand. And thankfully, with Showalter at the helm, we don’t have to worry about any Justin Baldoni-style shenanigans.

Who Stars in Verity?

Hathaway is reteaming with Showalter here. She plays Verity, which—given the fake paralysis—assumes the showy part. And OK, fine: I do like the idea of Hathaway leaning into a villain role. I love Emma Stone as the title character in Cruella; I would have liked Hathaway even more.

Dakota Johnson will play Lowen, and the man apparently worth all the fuss, Jeremy Crawford, will be played by Josh Hartnett.

OK, yeah. That’s good casting—especially coming off M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, where Hartnett plays both a sympathetic father and a serial killer.

I may have accidentally hyped myself for this movie.

Colleen Hoover notwithstanding.

Damn it.

No release date has been announced.