Anne Hathaway’s New Thriller Is Officially a Streaming Sensation After Losing 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. 

After a tight one-month theatrical window, Amazon MGM has debuted its new thriller on the PVOD market. Starring Anne Hathaway, the movie emerged as a box-office hit, but not nearly as big as this year’s other Amazon blockbuster Project Hail Mary. That sci-fi sensation was given an extended theatrical window because of its spectacular performance — this is a luxury that wasn’t afforded to Hathaway’s new release. The movie was expected to follow in the footsteps of two blockbusters, It Ends with Us and The Housemaid, which grossed $350 million and $400 million worldwide, respectively. Now that the new film is available at home, Amazon pulled it from hundreds more theaters nationwide.

Also featuring Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, the movie in question is based on a bestseller by Colleen Hoover. Also based on a Hoover novel, It Ends with Us emerged as a runaway hit on the back of a massive behind-the-scenes conflict that quickly became public. Two other Hoover adaptations — Reminders of Him and Regretting You — followed and grossed roughly $90 million worldwide each. Even though the new Hathaway film is based on one of Hoover’s most popular books, it’s still nowhere close to matching the success of It Ends with Us.

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 Movie Has Grossed So Far

• Sony Pictures

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Sony Pictures

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Sony Pictures

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Alisha Wetherill / Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

• Image via Amazon MGM Studios

Sony Pictures

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. Directed by Michael Showalter, the movie has grossed around $165 million worldwide against a reported budget of $40 million. This puts it between fellow psychological thriller adaptation The Girl on the Train, which grossed around $175 million worldwide in 2016, and Where the Crawdads Sing, which made around $145 million worldwide in 2022. Verity received mediocre reviews and is now sitting at a 31% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Possessing all the ingredients for a guilty pleasure, Verity leans more towards guilty than pleasurable due to plot twists that are more deflating than intriguing.” However, the film’s 72% audience score is powering it to success on the PVOD market. According to FlixPatrol, Verity overtook Spider-Man: Brand New Day to become the number-one movie on the domestic Amazon and iTunes charts. At the same time, the film’s theater count has fallen from 3,510 in week one to 1,830 this week. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.