Anne Hathaway’s New Thriller Officially Removed From 2,800 Theaters After Digital Debut

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. 

October was the month of literary adaptations. While Netflix debuted its critically acclaimed East of Eden limited series, two movies based on entirely different books were released theatrically. Both movies are now available on the PVOD market, which has resulted in a sharp decline in their respective theater counts. The less successful of the two, Sense and Sensibility, debuted digitally this past week, while a star-studded Colleen Hoover adaptation has been available to rent and purchase at home for a couple of weeks now.

The psychological thriller starring Anne Hathaway did solid, if unspectacular, business in its box office run. The movie was expected to perform along the lines of the 2024 Hoover adaptation It Ends with Us, not to mention past hits aimed at the same audience — Gone Girl and The Housemaid. It Ends with Us grossed $350 million at the worldwide box office, while Gone Girl made $370 million and The Housemaid generated $400 million.

The new Hoover adaptation wasn’t buoyed by controversy, nor did it receive particularly positive reviews. It marked the final release of a packed year for Hathaway, who previously starred in the blockbusters The Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada 2, which grossed more than $2.5 billion in combined global box office revenue. Hathaway also starred in the box-office misfire Mother Mary, and the underperformer The End of Oak Street.

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 Thriller Has Grossed So Far at the Box Office

• 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

Her latest release, of course, is Verity. Also starring Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, the movie was directed by Michael Showalter. The filmmaker previously worked with Hathaway on another literary adaptation, the Prime Video original The Idea of You. It could be argued that Verity was also designed for home-video success, and that anything it made at the box office is a pure bonus.

Ultimately, the movie has grossed around $175 million worldwide against a reported budget of $40 million. While successful, it’s sitting in the same range as the similarly targeted The Girl on the Train and Where the Crawdads Sing. The movie now holds a 32% score on the aggregator website 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.” According to FlixPatrol, Verity emerged as the number-one hit on iTunes and Amazon following its digital debut, which has also led to its theater count dropping to 710 locations nationwide this week. The film debuted in 3,510 theaters five weeks ago.

Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.