Verity Got Pulled From Over a Thousand Theatres, So Now It's Coming Home Early

Verity is a strange box office story. The Colleen Hoover adaptation with Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson opened at number one in early October with about 32.6 million dollars, which looked like a win for a thriller with a 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a C+ CinemaScore. Then audiences did what a C+ usually means they will do. Three weeks later it had dropped to eighth and the studio pulled it from more than a thousand screens.

The response has been to rush it to digital rental, which is becoming the standard move for films that open big and fade fast. If you were curious but not curious enough to drive to a cinema, you will be able to watch it from your sofa within days. For Dakota Johnson it is still a decent result after Materialists, and for Hathaway it keeps a busy year ticking along.

My honest take is that the book's readers showed up on opening weekend and everybody else listened to the reviews. That is a healthy sign for cinema in a way, even if the studio will not see it that way. Did you see it in theatres, and was it as messy as the critics said?