The Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett limped into Indian theatres on October 2 against a reported $40 million budget.
Verity hit Indian screens on October 2 and barely made a dent. The Michael Showalter-directed thriller, built around Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, pulled in ₹1.89 crore net on Day 1, according to Sacnilk figures reported by Free Press Journal. Gross collections in India stood at ₹2.12 crore, and as of the report, that figure was also the film's entire worldwide gross tally.
That's a strange number to sit with. Verity reportedly cost around $40 million to make, and its India opening doesn't come close to reflecting that scale. For context, a film with this cast and this kind of pre-release buzz would ordinarily expect a stronger single-day start, especially with Hoover's fanbase in the mix. It didn't happen here, at least not yet.
There's a caveat worth stating plainly: Verity is an international release, not a India-first production, so its real test is the aggregate across markets rather than any single territory's opening weekend. The India number is one data point, not the whole picture. Overseas collections, which weren't broken out separately in the available figures, will end up mattering a lot more to how this film's run gets judged.
The story itself leans into exactly the kind of psychological unease that's made Hoover's novel a bestseller. Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a writer hired by Jeremy Crawford, played by Josh Hartnett, to finish the unfinished book series of his injured wife Verity, played by Anne Hathaway. What starts as a ghostwriting gig turns into Lowen uncovering unsettling details about the Crawford household, and about whether Verity's apparent incapacitation is quite what it seems.
Free Press Journal's own review gave the film 3 out of 5 stars, calling it a thriller that "asks you to abandon disbelief at the door and then rewards you for doing so." The review flagged the twists as "irresistible even when they are improbable" and credited the performances for keeping things moving, while raising a fair question about whether the film's shocks are doing the work that substance should.
So where does Verity go from here? A lot rides on word of mouth, given the modest opening doesn't automatically mean a weak run, Erotic thrillers built on a cult-favourite book often see their numbers climb once reviews and social chatter settle in. The coming days, particularly how the film holds over its first weekend and what overseas markets report, will tell a clearer story than Day 1 ever could.
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