Anne Hathaway’s New Thriller Finds Streaming Redemption After Being Removed From 1,700 Theaters

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

Anne Hathaway has done two movies after The Odyssey, and both of them are now available to watch at home even though Christopher Nolan‘s epic isn’t. The first of the bunch, the sci-fi thriller The End of Oak Street, grossed around $120 million worldwide against a reported budget of $80 million — not quite a blockbuster success, but not an outright bomb either. Hathaway’s final release of the year is a psychological thriller that has emerged as a hit by every metric, except comparative analysis. Based on a bestseller by It Ends with Us author Colleen Hoover, the new movie was expected to perform along the same lines as the It Ends with Us adaptation that debuted a couple of years ago. However, the new film has grossed roughly half of that hit, which stars Blake Lively.

In light of its declining box office returns and its well-timed PVOD debut, the movie saw a further reduction in its theater count. Also featuring Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, the film opened in 3,510 theaters and grossed more than $30 million domestically. As it enters its fifth week of release, the film’s theater count, which had already been reduced to 2,442, is now sitting at 1,830. This marks an overall decrease of around 1,700 theaters in two weeks.

Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours.
Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from
the encounter.

Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you
completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the
conversation is.

• Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He
  never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
• You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve
  is exactly the door he would knock on.
• The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence.
  It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
• He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.

Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is
after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.

• The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence
  against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
• He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool
  you would normally reach for.
• His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend
  the rest of your life proving him wrong.
• He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.

Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work
out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.

• Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from:
  a mind the equal of the hero’s, pointed the wrong way.
• You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he
  has already built the room.
• This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs
  the game to be worth playing.
• It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.

Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that
is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.

• Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the
  answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
• You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no
  interest in how capable you are.
• No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences
  quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
• Call it. He will wait.

Here’s How Much the Psychological Thriller Has Grossed So Far at the Box Office

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

We’re talking, of course, about Verity. While the film has overtaken the global hauls of the two most recent Hoover adaptations — Reminders of Him and Regretting You, which grossed roughly $90 million each — it’s nowhere near the $350 million haul of It Ends with Us. Produced on a reported budget of $40 million, the film has generated around $165 million worldwide, having outperformed its fellow literary adaptation Where the Crawdads Sing. It’s roughly $10 million shy of surpassing the lifetime global haul of The Girl on the Train. Verity received mediocre reviews and is now sitting at a 31% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. However, it has emerged as an instant PVOD hit, according to FlixPatrol. It’s now the number-one movie nationwide on iTunes, having overtaken Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.