A romance film made for a reported $25 million or so pulled in more than $350 million at the global box office in the summer of 2024, and studio executives noticed. It Ends with Us, adapted from Colleen Hoover's 2016 novel, had no superhero and no franchise number in its title, and nothing obvious in the way of spectacle to sell. It had a readership, which was enough. The Colleen Hoover movies now moving through development, production and release amount to one of the more telling experiments in how Hollywood buys stories.
A novelist the publishers didn't plan
Hoover's route here was unusual. She began by self-publishing, building a following in the early 2010s from Texas, long before the industry took her seriously. Her books sat in a gap traditional publishers were slow to price: emotionally raw and quick to read, often built around a single devastating turn. Ugly Love, Verity and It Ends with Us found their biggest audience years after release, when TikTok's book community pushed backlist titles up the charts in 2021 and 2022. At one point she held several slots on the bestseller lists at once, a feat usually reserved for thriller writers rather than romance authors.
That history matters to film buyers. A book that sells steadily for years, then surges because strangers keep pressing it on friends, carries something a screenwriter's original pitch never does: evidence. Studios have always liked pre-sold material. What they are learning, slowly, is that a loyal readership can be more dependable than a famous title.
The $350 million proof of concept
The 2024 adaptation starred Blake Lively as Lily Bloom, with Justin Baldoni directing and playing Ryle. It opened strongly and kept going, helped by an audience that turned up in groups and, in many cases, in floral outfits. That is the detail I keep returning to: people dressed for it, as if going to a gathering rather than a screening. Box office trackers put its worldwide gross at well over ten times its budget, numbers that in any other genre would set off a stampede of copycat greenlights.
The stampede did come. Paramount followed with Regretting You, and Universal's Reminders of Him reached cinemas earlier this year. Amazon MGM has been developing Verity, the psychological thriller that sits far from Hoover's romantic image, with Anne Hathaway attached to the lead. It's a notable choice. Where the earlier titles courted the book club crowd, Verity goes after thriller audiences, and it will test whether her name carries across genres or only across a mood.
Executives rarely say this aloud, but a fan base that fills theaters for one adaptation can feel burned by the next if casting or tone drifts from the page. Readers hold strong, specific pictures of these characters. Goodwill won't save a weak script.
When the set becomes the story
The first film's success was followed by a very public collapse of the partnership behind it. In December 2024, Lively filed legal claims against Baldoni and others tied to the production, alleging harassment on set and a coordinated effort to damage her reputation. Baldoni and his side denied the allegations and brought a countersuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars, which a federal judge dismissed in 2025. The wider dispute has dragged through the courts since, and its final outcome isn't something this piece can settle.
Hoover herself has stayed mostly on the margins. That silence has drawn its own commentary, since the novel at the center of the film deals with domestic abuse, and the real-world argument played out in tabloid and legal terms that sat awkwardly beside the book's themes. She has also acknowledged, in earlier years, that some readers felt the novels treated painful relationships too gently, a criticism that has followed her books for as long as they've been popular.
The dispute exposed how thin the line is between a marketing triumph and a liability. The first film's promotion leaned hard on a cheerful, fashion-forward mood that sat uneasily with the story's subject. Who, exactly, was that mood for? A less buoyant campaign might have drawn a smaller crowd. It might also have avoided some of the wreckage.
What the pipeline says about the business
Hoover is not alone in this. Studios have spent a decade chasing material with a built-in community, from young adult series to fan fiction turned bestseller. Her books are simply the most successful recent case, with the clearest numbers attached.
Still, a pattern that works once can flatten out. Hoover has written dozens of books, so material is not scarce, but not every title has the same pull, and audiences tire when the marketing starts to rhyme. The next few releases will show whether 2024 was a repeatable formula or one well-timed summer.
The larger consequence may land in the publishing offices rather than on the studio lots. If readers, not critics or franchises, drive a film's opening weekend, then agents will shop novels to Hollywood earlier and with higher expectations. Authors with devoted followings will hold stronger hands in negotiations over casting and tone. And the legal fight still unfolding over the first film is likely to make everyone involved in the next one read their contracts more carefully. Whether Verity reaches the screen as a hit or a cautionary tale will say a good deal about which lesson the industry took.