Amazon MGM gives sneak peek at ‘Verity’ starring Anne Hathaway

Amazon MGM Studios at CinemaCon gave the first sneak peek at Verity. It’s a film adaptation of the bestselling psychological thriller by It Ends with Us author Colleen Hoover.

Directed by Michael Showalter, a frequent hire of the studio who reteams with Anne Hathaway on the heels of their rom-com The Idea of You, Verity follows Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer who is hired to complete a successful book series after its author, Verity Crawford (Hathaway), is incapacitated. Once inside the Crawford home, she becomes entangled with Verity’s husband, Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and uncovers an unfinished manuscript that may reveal disturbing truths about the author.

Tonight in Las Vegas, Amazon MGM unveiled a for-the-room-only trailer. The two women meet, and Lowen is shocked to find Verity in the state she is. “Can she speak? Does she know what’s going on?” Lowen asked as she prepared to assemble her notes and outlines. Jeremy assures her that if anyone were to take over Verity’s series, he’d want it to be someone whose work she respected. Did she? Does she? It gets creepy. And what’s between Verity and Jeremy?

Also starring Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner, Verity hits theatres on October 2.

The movie is one of several book-to-film adaptations based on the work of BookTok phenomenon Hoover, on the heels of Sony’s It Ends with Us, which broke out as an outsized commercial success at a worldwide gross exceeding $351 million, even as a legal battle between the film’s key creatives, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, threatened to overshadow that success. Paramount followed that film up quickly with Regretting You, a Hoover adaptation starring Allison Williams, McKenna Grace, Dave Franco and Mason Thames, which grossed over $90 million.

After that came Universal’s Reminders of Him, starring Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers, which did more than $84M in theatres when it opened last month.

When Amazon MGM made its debut at CinemaCon last year, it had a lot to prove without a massive track record of success. And after a few bumpy entries early in the year, the studio has definitely proven that it belongs with the success of “Project Hail Mary.” Now it will be touting its “Thomas Crown Affair” remake from Michael B. Jordan, “Masters of the Universe,” “Spaceballs 2,” and more.

In these Daily Dispatches from CinemaCon, we’re sharing the highlights of what we saw, what was announced, what we didn’t, and what the overall vibe was.

The BEST Thing We Saw

Amazon MGM opened its presentation with a gorgeous performance from Jon Batiste alone at a piano and with a beat machine. Batiste is the composer of “The Thomas Crown Affair,” and he set the tone for a big evening right out of the gate. That led directly into Best Actor winner Michael B. Jordan strutting his megawatt star power with a sexy, stylish, and thrilling caper. We described a little more about the trailer here.

The “Spaceballs” sequel is titled “Spaceballs: The New One,” even though Mel Brooks previously joked that it would be “The Search for More Money.” It’s just like the old one, but it’s a new one, Brooks joked in a video (he couldn’t be there because he’s seeing Phish at the Sphere tonight). And in a sizzle, Lord Helmet said he doesn’t just want some of your theatres, he wants “all of them.” “I want VistaVision, even though I don’t know what it is.” He’s even thinking about making a bid on Warner Bros. Discovery. Director Josh Greenbaum brought the original cast of Bill Pullman, Daphne Zuniga, and even the long-retired Rick Moranis, who were all on hand along with new cast members Josh Gad and Lewis Pullman. And in a funny twist, Moranis intentionally kept getting cut off before he could get a word out.

Some of the early footage, not a full trailer, included a droid that is a cube rolling around poorly, some Harry Potter kids for some reason, and even a Na’vi standing at a urinal and Moranis staring and saying in their native language, “I see you.” This is going to be a fun one.

“Project Hail Mary” has extended its exclusive theatrical window, i.e. it’s not immediately going to streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Ryan Gosling announced along with Phil Lord and Chris Miller on the CinemaCon stage, and why wouldn’t it? The film has made $525 million worldwide and is going strong.

The long-gestating “Highlander” starring Henry Cavill is halfway through production and still needs to shoot in several other exotic locations, we learned, but they showed an in-progress teaser of Cavill and the rest of the cast doing fight training. The studio clearly expects it to be a big one.

“Project Hail Mary” has extended its exclusive theatrical window, i.e. it’s not immediately going to streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Ryan Gosling announced along with Phil Lord and Chris Miller on the CinemaCon stage, and why wouldn’t it? The film has made $525 million worldwide and is going strong.

The long-gestating “Highlander” starring Henry Cavill is halfway through production and still needs to shoot in several other exotic locations, we learned, but they showed an in-progress teaser of Cavill and the rest of the cast doing fight training. The studio clearly expects it to be a big one.

We got a lot of stylised action films, but the one that stood out to us was “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” starring Mahershala Ali and directed by Bassam Tariq. Ali plays a killer in what he described as a “visceral and morally complex” thriller, but it’s much more of an arthouse drama with some striking cinematography that made it look like what Barry Jenkins would do if he made an action film.

It might be a stretch to say we “expected” Amazon MGM to have some seismic James Bond news and for CinemaCon to be the place to do it and it not have leaked out earlier (we think we’re a ways away from any sort of announcement anyway, based on Denis Villeneuve’s schedule), but we can dream. Turns out we were told, “don’t get too excited.”

Amazon promised 15 films by 2027 last year and looks on pace to hit that. “This is not about volume, this is about impact. We are giving audiences a reason to leave the house,” Amazon’s Kevin Wilson told the crowd, and he even quoted Ryan Gosling’s now infamous statement to a theatre, “It’s not your job to keep theatres open, it’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.” It seemed to be the prevailing message that Amazon does believe in theaters and wants to blend original stories with its deep bench of IP in the MGM library, and film chief Valenti said this is part of a “very deliberate” approach to how they’re building their slate, additionally shouting out the teams at Orion and Scott Stuber’s United Artists about the distinctive flavors of each of those labels.