When Anne Hathaway received the script for a new film, the Oscar-winning star assumed she was being considered for the lead in a cosy romcom. After all, the writer-director Michael Showalter made his name with comedy, co-creating the Wet Hot American Summer franchise, as well as the acclaimed series Search Party. “I had no idea what it was about,” says Hathaway now. “I read the log-line and saw I was playing a writer. I’m like, ‘Oh, cool, we’re going to make a romcom about a writer!’ Then I read it… and it’s so not that.”
Indeed, Verity is very much not a romantic comedy. The latest Colleen Hoover adaptation – we’ve averaged at least one a year since It Ends With Us made headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2024 – is deliciously deranged, a psychosexual thriller in the vein of throwback hits like Fatal Attraction and Body Heat.
