Is Colleen Hoover the box office’s new secret weapon?
A case could be made after 2024’s “It Ends With Us” became a sleeper hit for Sony and “Regretting You” was one of Paramount’s only 2025 films to turn a theatrical profit. In 2026, the prolific author has two more movies based on her bestselling novels. First is March’s romantic drama “Reminders of Him” from Universal, followed by October’s psychosexual thriller “Verity” from Amazon MGM. There’s a reason Hoover is in such demand: Her genre-spanning work is resonating when women aren’t going to theaters for much else.
“Hollywood isn’t producing enough adult romance dramas,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “The audience is there, but the content isn’t. Colleen Hoover’s adaptations are filling that space.”
Hoover has been writing fiction since 2012; she’s released 26 novels, which have collectively sold more than 35 million copies. Hoover shot into the stratosphere in 2020 when she became the obsession of BookTok, a TikTok subset that’s devoted to reading. That year, she sold the rights to “It Ends With Us,” “Regretting You” and “Verity.”
Hoover’s first book to get the big screen treatment was “It Ends With Us,” which generated a stellar $350 million against a $25 million budget. (The follow-up, “It Starts With Us,” is unlikely to be filmed because stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also directed, are embroiled in a vicious legal battle.) Her next film, “Regretting You,” arrived with a lower profile but managed to gross $90 million against a $30 million budget.
Since those successes, Hoover’s asking price has risen considerably. It’s unclear how much she has profited from expanding her empire to the screen. Generally, a relatively unknown writer can sell film rights for $250,000 to $500,000; an established author can earn above $2 million. But Hoover no longer wants to option her books, instead choosing to develop through her production company, HeartBones Entertainment. After serving as an executive producer on “It Ends With Us” and “Regretting You,” she’s taken on a larger role as co-producer of “Reminders of Him” and “Verity.”
“My career was at a different level back then. I had a sense of, ‘Someone wants to buy this! Take it. Do something well with it,'” Hoover says. “It was just exciting to get an offer.”
“Reminders of Him,” Hoover’s first venture as a screenwriter, is expected to debut around $10 million to $12 million, a solid start against its $25 million production budget. It’s too soon to know how “Verity,” starring Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway, will do in theaters. However, box office watchers are encouraged by last year’s twisted thriller “The Housemaid,” based on Freida McFadden’s novel, which broke out with $376 million.
“People underestimate the book world, just based on projections of what [Hollywood] thinks movies will do — and how much those projections are surpassed,” Hoover says.
Literary agents constantly mine the New York Times bestseller list for the next big thing. Yet increasingly Netflix has become the de facto home of female-skewing stories, from Jenny Han’s “To All the Boys” trilogy to Emily Henry’s “People We Meet on Vacation.” Meanwhile the Anne Hathaway-led “The Idea of You” debuted on Amazon Prime, and Universal’s fourth “Bridget Jones” installment landed directly on Peacock in the U.S., with both companies citing financial reasons for not putting the film in cinemas. (However “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” earned a massive $140 million at the international box office). Other than Sony’s 2022 box office winner “Where the Crawdads Sing,” theatrical adaptations aimed at women have mostly disappeared since the days when Nicholas Sparks weepies like “The Notebook” and “Dear John” or John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” were packing in crowds.
“Female-driven literary adaptations didn’t fall out of favor with audiences; they fell out of favor with the theatrical business model,” Bock says. “Streaming simply captured the genre.”
Now, traditional studios are back on the hunt for their version of “It Ends With Us” or “The Housemaid.”
“When I talk to buyers, they want raunchy thrillers. They want dark romance. They want the scenes where people go, ‘Oh my God. Did you see that?’” says Robert Kulzer, an exec at “Regretting You” producer Constantin Films.
These movies are appealing because their modest budgets make them low-risk bets. Even better, recent adaptations have resonated across the globe. There’s a cliche that overseas audiences prefer the action genre, but “It Ends With Us” and “The Housemaid” were bigger at the international box office than in North America.
“You never know what’s getting somebody’s bum off their sofa,” says Hoover’s producing partner Lauren Levine. “But it amazes me that people are constantly surprised when these movies do well… as if it’s radical. Female stories are impactful — and guys like them too.”
English (US) ·