Amazon MGM Studios has unveiled the first teaser for Verity, its adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling psychological thriller, and the new footage leans hard into the movie’s unsettling core. Dakota Johnson stars as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish a successful book series after its author is incapacitated, while Anne Hathaway plays the title character, Verity Crawford.
The verity trailer opens with Lowen walking into the darkness of the Crawford home as Verity lies ill in bed. It then shows Jeremy Crawford, played by Josh Hartnett, making out with Lowen while his wife is in the room, before revealing that it is Verity herself Lowen is getting intimate with. That turn gives the teaser its sharpest jolt and makes clear this is less a straight romance than a story built on manipulation, desire and uncertainty.
Lowen’s work assignment becomes personal when she moves into the Crawford home and uncovers an unfinished manuscript that may expose disturbing truths about Verity. The teaser gives Hathaway the kind of unnerving line reading that the role depends on, with Verity warning, “Even with my generous warning, you’re going to continue to ingest my words,” and then adding, “But know one thing: there is no light where we’re going. Darkness ahead.”
The film arrives in theaters on October 2, and the timing matters because Amazon MGM is now pushing its own version of the story after previously showing a different trailer at CinemaCon. Deadline said the teaser unveiled today is not the same cut shown there. Michael Showalter directed the film, which also stars Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner, and it joins a crowded field of Hoover adaptations that have already reached the screen from other studios, including It Ends with Us, Regretting You and Reminders of Him.
For viewers, the question is not whether Verity will be dark; the teaser answers that in under a minute. The real test is whether the film can turn Hoover’s bestseller into a thriller that keeps its secrets until October 2.