Verity Is Winning the Box Office — But Its Audience Score Tells Another Story

Verity is attracting a lot of opening-weekend attention. Whether viewers are leaving satisfied is a different question: the thriller is projected to lead the North American box office with about $33 million, while its opening-night audience grade is C+.

The October 3 estimate follows a reported $15 million opening day across 3,510 theaters. The weekend total is still a forecast. The audience grade, however, is an early response from people who have already bought a ticket and watched the adaptation.

What does a C+ audience grade tell us?

The grade comes from an opening-night poll of moviegoers. It is not a percentage saying that a particular share of viewers hated the film, and it is not a survey of every person who will eventually watch it.

It records how that first-night sample felt after the screening. The box-office estimate records spending. Someone can be excited enough to see a movie immediately and still walk out disappointed; both results can happen at the same time.

For an adaptation with an existing readership, that gap makes the next weekend interesting. Are fans recommending it, warning friends away, or telling them to see it so they can argue about the changes? The grade cannot explain their individual reasons, and there is no need to invent a single complaint on their behalf.

What is Verity about?

Dakota Johnson plays Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish bestselling novelist Verity Crawford’s books after an accident leaves Verity unable to work. Anne Hathaway plays Verity, and Josh Hartnett plays her husband Jeremy.

Lowen moves into the Crawford estate and finds autobiographical notes containing disturbing claims about the family. Her job becomes harder to separate from her attraction to Jeremy and her uncertainty about what she has discovered.

Michael Showalter directs the film, based on Colleen Hoover’s novel, with a screenplay credited to Nick Antosca and Hoover. The setup gives book readers plenty to compare, but the audience poll does not identify which scenes or choices produced the grade.

One confirmed change is covered in our article about how Hathaway and Johnson helped develop an intimate Verity scene.

A strong start does not settle the argument

Verity is now in theaters following its October 2 release. Anyone choosing it for this weekend can expect a psychological thriller about a writer entering another family’s secrets, not a straightforward romance.

The opening projection suggests the adaptation has given people a reason to show up. Its next challenge is giving enough of them a reason to recommend it.