The It Ends With Us movie might be synonymous with Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni's legal battle, but another one of her books is getting the movie treatment with Michael Showalter's Verity. The book to screen adaptation will arrive in theaters shortly, and features an all-star cast including Josh Hartnett, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson. The Verity trailer showed the latter actresses locking lips, and it turns out that moment wasn't originally in the script.
Colleen Hoover has spoken about how upsetting the It Ends With Us drama was, but luckily Verity's road to theaters has been smooth sailing. In an interview with Variety, Showalter revealed how Hathaway and Johnson's kiss ended up coming to fruition, especially since it doesn't happen in the book. In the filmmaker's words:
It started with ‘we need some sexy stuff to happen.' In the book, she’s looking at the picture of Harper, has the conversation with Jeremy, she talks about how great he was, and they have this intimate-hug moment that I thought had the potential to be something very sexually charged.
It's fairly common for movies based off of books to make some deviations from the source material. Case in point: The Housemaid made 4 big changes from the book, while It Ends With Us had 10 changes that book fans quickly clocked. So as Verity was in development, Showalter and Hoover wanted to add moments to make the film more sexy.
In the same interview, the Big Sick director reveled that the steamy kiss between Verity and Lowen was actually Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway's idea. As he put it:
It really evolved into Anne and Dakota saying, ‘What if while she’s making out with him, it turns into [Anne]?’ And me going, ‘If you want to do that, yeah.'
And just like that, the steamiest moment from Verity's trailer was born. The moment where Johnson goes from kissing Josh Hartnett to kissing Anne Hathaway was one of the most memorable moments from the early footage, and I'm curious to see how the forthcoming adaptation ends up faring at the box office. After all, sex sells.
Michael Showalter spoke more about how happy he was with how this sequence in Verity came out. Fans only got to see a brief moment from the scene, but that'll change when it hits theaters in early October. The director went on to share:
And I thought there was something very sexy — erotic — about Dakota being like, ‘I’m just going to sit on your lap and start kissing you.’ She sees [Jeremy] and just goes there, and that felt like the beginning of something that felt transgressive. She took this thing that she wants, and he’s there for it.
As a reminder, you can re-watch the full trailer for Verity below, complete with a glimpse into Hathaway and Johnson's lip locking session. Check it out:
Verity is Anne Hathaway's final movie of the year, and it should be interesting to see how it performs both critically and financially. The cast is strong and the trailer is thrilling... and a steamy kiss doesn't help to sell things.
All will be revealed when Verity hits theaters on October 2nd as part of the 2026 movie release list. Hopefully this Colleen Hoover movie has far less BTS drama than its predecessor.
