Photo credit: Alisha Wetherill © 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Verity had a life long before anybody started talking about turning it into a movie. Colleen Hoover first self-published the psychological thriller in 2018, and readers took it from there. The book became one of her biggest titles, landed on bestseller lists and built up a fan base that has spent years talking about the twists and arguing over exactly what they think happened. So Anne Hathaway knew what she was walking into.
She stars in Verity and is also a producer on the movie, which meant there was more to think about than simply playing the role. There were already millions of readers out there with their own version of this story in their heads.
Anne Hathaway knew Verity readers were already invested
That can be a tricky place to start.
People who love a book usually know it really well. They remember certain moments. They have opinions about the characters. And once a movie gets announced, they start wondering what will stay, what will change and whether the people making it actually understand why the book worked for them.
Hathaway clearly understood that.
She said the novel became an important guide while they were making the movie because readers were the people who loved Verity first.
To her, respecting that audience started with respecting the book itself.
Colleen Hoover’s novel stayed close to the process
No movie adaptation can put every page of a novel on screen. Something is always going to change.
Books can spend pages inside somebody’s thoughts. A movie has to find another way to get that across. Sometimes scenes get combined. Other things have to move faster.
But Hathaway did not look at the original novel as something the movie needed to leave behind.
Quite the opposite.
She talked about wanting fans to feel that the filmmakers loved and valued Hoover’s book just as much as the readers did.
That is probably a pretty good place to start when you’re dealing with fans who have been living with a story for years.
Click on the video below to hear Anne Hathaway talk about adapting Colleen Hoover’s Verity and why honoring the readers who loved the book first mattered to her.
Verity did not have to wait for an audience
Most movies open and then find out whether people care.
Verity already had people waiting.
That changes things a little. Casting gets discussed before filming even starts. Fans notice details in trailers. Every change from the book can become its own conversation.
There is excitement in that, obviously. There is pressure too.
And with Verity, people tend to have opinions. Strong ones.
For Hathaway, those readers were not some audience the movie could worry about later. They were part of the reason the movie existed in the first place.
Anne Hathaway started with something pretty simple
Her approach really comes down to this: love the material you’re adapting.
It sounds obvious, but maybe it isn’t always.
If readers are going to trust a filmmaker or an actor with a book they care about, they probably want to feel like the people on the other side of the camera care about it too.
That does not mean everybody will agree with every decision the movie makes. With a book this popular, that would probably be impossible anyway.
But Hathaway wanted the starting point to be clear. The movie was being made by people who understood that Verity belonged to readers before it ever belonged to Hollywood.
And for a story with this many passionate fans, that matters.
Verity is now playing in theaters.
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