Anne Hathaway's New Thriller Officially Says Goodbye to 1,100 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. 

Perhaps the expectations for the new Colleen Hoover adaptation were unreasonably high. But the lofty projections made sense, given how well Hoover’s last few films have performed. The streak began with It Ends with Us, which rode a wave of controversy to more than $350 million worldwide. Even the minor romance adaptations Reminders of Him and Regretting You were able to generate around $90 million worldwide apiece. The new Hoover adaptation was compared to It Ends with Us, mainly because they’re both psychological thrillers. It was also being compared to last year’s The Housemaid, another literary adaptation targeted at the same demographic, which made $400 million globally. However, after three weeks of release and an impending home-video debut, the new movie has drastically slowed down.

Starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett, the film topped the domestic box-office chart with a $32 million debut, and has so far generated nearly $150 million worldwide against a reported budget of $40 million. If it’s lucky, it should be able to conclude its run in the same range as the 2016 psychological thriller The Girl on the Train, which made around $170 million globally. That said, the chances of it matching It Ends with Us, The Housemaid, or even Gone Girl are next to nil. The movie caps a particularly packed year for Hathaway, after The Odyssey, The Devil Wears Prada 2, The End of Oak Street, and Mother Mary.

Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath
your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what
it would leave behind.

Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you
to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever
won that particular argument.

• Freddy is horror’s cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot
  guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
• You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your
  own head is where this does its damage.
• These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose
  because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
• You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.

Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the
person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.

• Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you
  describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
• You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You
  know that feeling from real life too.
• The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you
  have met those adults.
• By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.

Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost
certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.

• Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be
  somebody who was at the party.
• You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the
  same way you watch films.
• The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are
  the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
• Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.

Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people
asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.

• The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary
  room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
• Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than
  personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
• This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are
  the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
• Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one
  standing in the hallway.

The Psychological Thriller Will Hit the PVOD Market Next Week

• 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

We’re talking, of course, about Verity. Directed by Michael Showalter, the movie holds a 31% 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.” The movie debuted in more than 3,500 theaters before losing approximately 500 theaters in its third week. As it enters its fourth week, Verity will play in around 2,400 theaters nationwide and is poised to lose another 600 locations. The movie is slated to debut on the PVOD market next week, which will result in another hefty drop in its theater count. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Verity is a psychological thriller centering on Lowen Ashleigh, a writer hired to complete novels for Verity Crawford, a bestselling author incapacitated by an accident. As Lowen works at the Crawford residence, she unravels unsettling truths about Verity, intensifying the tension within the household.