Let’s talk about a Colleen Hoover book-to-film adaptation. Not THAT one, for a change, but the next project that is now in production: Verity. As you probably know, Colleen Hoover is probably COVID’s most successful author. She was self-publishing before 2020 and her books were modestly successful, she’d attracted a healthy fanbase. But not to the level of phenomenon – that happened with COVID and TikTok and, suddenly, It Ends With Us, which came out in 2016, became a crazy ass smash hit. Same goes for Verity.
We know all the sh-t that’s happening around IEWU and at this point it seems never-ending. Right now, though, the story with Verity is much less…messy. The story is about a struggling writer called Lowen, played by Dakota Johnson who is hired by a man called Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett, who asks her to finish his wife’s book series. His wife is Verity, paralysed due to a “mysterious accident”, bedridden in the couple’s home. Dakota’s character moves into the home. Things get weird…and, apparently, also horny. I haven’t read it, but obviously there’s going to be an attraction that develops between Dakota and Josh, with Annie and her secrets hovering upstairs.
So this might be Dakota’s return to the erotic thriller. And it would be a waste of time for THE Anne Hathaway to play a character who isn’t complicated and layered and, maybe, a little creepy.
Here Annie is as Verity, presumably in some kind of flashback, like before whatever happens to her happens to her? It’s giving glamourous and elegant…with a heavy dash of enigmatic. Can’t wait to see how this scene plays out on screen, for many reasons, one of them being that I think she’s wearing a wig – so I’m interested in how well done it will be, if indeed it is one. She wore what I think was a wig in some of the scenes in The Idea of You that was gorgeous on her. And, by the way, that won’t be the only thing the two films have in common. Because Michael Showalter, who directed Annie in The Idea of You, is also directing Verity.
Which means there’s pretty much no chance that Verity will end up suffering the same fate as It Ends With Us. For starters, Michael Showalter is an experienced director.
More good news? More Josh Hartnett, continuing his comeback – can we call it a comeback? The point is, Josh Hartnett is going to be in a movie that will potentially be really horny. And I have waited too f-cking long since 40 Days and 40 Nights!
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