Josh Hartnett has found his next thriller (and no, it’s not a Trap sequel).
The early 2000s heartthrob is continuing his recent career renaissance with Verity, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel.
Amazon MGM Studios announced on Friday that Hartnett and Dakota Johnson (Madame Web) are joining the cast alongside the previously announced Anne Hathaway.
Hartnett will play Jeremy Crawford, the husband of Hathaway’s bestselling thriller author, Verity. Johnson joins the cast as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin who hopes she’s found salvation when Jeremy hires her to complete the remaining books in a successful series that Verity is unable to finish after a mysterious accident.
Josh Hartnett; Dakota Johnson; Anne Hathaway. Pablo Cuadra/Getty; Dave Benett/WireImage; Cindy Ord/Getty
However, once Lowen arrives at the Crawford estate, she starts to realize all is not as it seems, discovering a secret, incomplete manuscript that potentially divulges chilling details about the Crawford family’s past. Lowen ingratiates herself with Jeremy and his son, Crew, to buy herself time to work out whether Verity’s books are truly fiction or an ominous warning from a deranged psychopath.
Hoover originally self-published Verity in 2018 before it grew into a phenomenon and was acquired by Grand Central Publishing in 2021. It sold more than one million copies in 2023 alone and has spent months on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s a fitting move for Johnson, considering that her breakout in Fifty Shades of Grey was also an adaptation of a hit novel that was originally self-published.
For Hartnett, it’s another prominent move as he continues the career resurgence that kicked off with last year’s Oppenheimer, in which he portrayed physicist Ernest Lawrence. He also recently guest starred on an episode of The Bear, as well as led M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, Trap.
Though Hartnett never stopped working, he did recede from the white-hot fame of his early career, which earned him heartthrob status for his turns in The Faculty, The Virgin Suicides, Pearl Harbor, and Black Hawk Down.
But for his part, he’s relishing the chance to do more diverse and interesting work. “As an actor, I want to constantly switch the trajectory and mess with people’s expectations. I wanted to do that the whole time from when I started 26 years ago,” Hartnett previously told Entertainment Weekly. “But at the time, the opportunity wasn’t there for me to play all of these disparate characters within the studio system, nor was I probably good enough. I was so young.”
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He continued, “But as I’ve gotten older, people have seen that potential in me more, and now I’m able to do it in these other films and TV shows. Personally, I’m really just feeling super lucky to be working with the directors I’m working with because, really, actors are only as good as their directors. So to be able to work with directors who are at the top of their game right now, and being able to play these characters that are so disparate, is a dream come true for me, honestly.”
Verity will be the next adaptation of one of Hoover’s novels. The adaptation of her book, It Ends With Us, starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, generated heaps of buzz (and gossip!) and over $346 million at the worldwide box office.
