This article contains mentions of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse as well as mental illness, infertility, and miscarriage.
Spoilers for It Ends With Us are ahead!
Summary
- Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us” grossed over $200 million in 2.5 weeks, boosting potential for future adaptations.
- Multiple upcoming Colleen Hoover book adaptations, like “Regretting You” and “Verity,” promise dramatic and suspenseful plots.
- With themes on infertility and second chances, “All Your Perfects” has the potential to be a touching and meaningful film adaptation.
Many Colleen Hoover books have the potential to be made into feature-length motion pictures after It Ends With Us grossed over $200 million within the first two and a half weeks in theaters. Based on Colleen Hoover’s controversial 2016 book, It Ends With Us follows a woman named Lily Bloom who finds herself in a marriage that mirrors her mother and abusive father’s relationship. The movie is a harrowing depiction of surviving domestic violence and breaking the cycle of abuse that maintains key parts of the book while drastically improving upon the source material.
Despite It Ends With Us’ mixed reviews, the movie performed incredibly well at the box office. Despite only a $25 million budget, the movie grossed an incredible $210.49 million worldwide within the first 2 weeks, according to Box Office Mojo. While all the ticket sales probably can’t be attributed to Colleen Hoover fans, it seems likely that the author’s name drew in a large portion of the audience. After all, she previously had seven books on The New York Times‘ best seller list at once and outsold the Bible. With this in mind, production companies could look to popular Colleen Hoover books for future movie projects.
7 Regretting You By Colleen Hoover (2019) – Confirmed
Goodreads Rating: 4.13 Stars Out Of 5
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After the success of It Ends With Us, two future adaptations of Colleen Hoover books have been highly publicized. The less popular book being turned into a movie is Regretting You. The novel spends more time exploring the mother-daughter relationship between Morgan, who was a teen mom, and Clara, her sixteen-year-old daughter. Tragedy strikes when Clara’s father, Chris, dies in a car accident, forcing them to find a way to cooperate without a buffer.
Like every Colleen Hoover book, romance is inserted as a subplot. A significant source of contention between the mother and daughter is that Clara grows closer with her crush, Miller. The sheer amount of drama and plot twists in this book made it an obvious choice for a movie adaptation.
Hopefully, Constantin Films’ adaptation of Regretting You should lean toward the drama genre instead of romance. The tension, family drama, and complex characters will appeal to audiences who enjoy dramas more than they would romance audiences, though the two obviously aren’t mutually exclusive. So far, they’ve tapped Dave Franco, Allison Williams, and Mckenna Grace to lead the cast – well-established actors with the versatility to display the emotional range necessary for this movie.
6 Verity By Colleen Hoover (2018) – Confirmed
Goodreads Rating: 4.31 Stars Out Of 5
The other major Colleen Hoover adaptation will have fans sitting on the edge of their seats with excitement. Verity and It Ends With Us are the two most popular books by Colleen Hoover by a landslide. The former book follows an author named Verity, who is in a coma. Her husband, Jeremy Crawford, hires a writer named Lowen to finish Verity’s books, but things take a dark turn when Lowen finds Verity’s autobiography, which paints a different light on the author.
Lowen must find a way to reconcile with this as she develops romantic feelings for Jeremy. It Ends With Us’ box office success has positive implications for Verity, providing an idea of how successful the upcoming movie could be. Colleen Hoover fans will clearly turn out for movie adaptations of her stories.
However, it’s worth mentioning that It Ends With Us targeted fans of romances and domestic abuse survivors (depending on which part of the marketing you go with), whereas Verity is a thriller with a romantic subplot. The audiences are inherently different. Additionally, the behind-the-scenes drama from It Ends With Us could dissuade skeptical people from going to the adaptation of Verity.
Related It Ends With Us Finally Said What We’ve All Been Thinking When It Comes To Colleen Hoover Books
In a moment of self-referential humor, the movie adaptation of It Ends With Us pokes fun at one of the most common traits of Colleen Hoover’s books.
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5 It Starts With Us By Colleen Hoover (2022)
Goodreads Rating: 3.87 Stars Out Of 5
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The most logical Colleen Hoover adaptation after It Ends With Us would be the book’s sequel, It Starts With Us. The book picks up directly after the last one left off, with both Lily and Altas trying to figure out their feelings for one another. While some readers probably went into that book expecting serious drama within Atlas and Lily’s relationship, everything goes fairly smoothly, except for Ryle’s obviously abusive responses. However, arguably the most exciting story developments are those of Atlas’s past, family, and unknown brother.
Fortunately or unfortunately – depending on the perception – the ending of the It Ends With Us movie adaptation makes an It Starts With Us adaptation nearly impossible. The writers would need to seriously transform the source material for anything to make sense because Lily is raising Emerson without Ryle.
One potential option would be to remove all the scenes and dialogue involving Ryle and focus solely on Atlas’ story, which would allow the writers to expand thinner parts of the storyline. Alternatively, if the writers wanted to bring Ryle back in and show the co-parenting conflict, they could have Ryle take Lily to court to have time with Emerson. This custody battle would keep the story moving in a way that feels authentic. At the same time, they could keep the meaningful part of Atlas’ story from the book.
4 Hopeless By Colleen Hoover (2012)
Goodreads Rating: 4.24 Stars Out Of 5
Hopeless, one of the first books released by Colleen Hoover, would work well as a movie based on the exciting plot twists and romance. The book follows 17-year-old Sky who is going to school for the first time, not knowing anyone after a life of homeschooling. She quickly connects with the school’s “bad boy,” Dean Holder. However, Sky’s life and romance aren’t all that it seems.This Colleen Hoover book is explicitly a dark romance story, making it easier to stomach some of the more macabre and challenging parts of the story. The book’s name is very overt, so there aren’t any false pretenses about a happy, uncomplicated romance. The story also provides an interesting back-and-forth between Sky’s life in the present day and her life 13 years earlier.
If done well, this back-and-forth can help build suspense and mystery in a movie, giving hints of potential plot twists without revealing too much information. The pacing is fast, making it an easy read. A movie adaptation of Hopeless would need to maintain this characteristic of the source material. However, it certainly feels possible with the right creative team behind the project.
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Hopeless Sequels |
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Losing Hope |
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Finding Cinderella |
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All Your Perfects |
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Finding Perfect |
3 Without Merit By Colleen Hoover (2017)
Goodreads Rating: 3.68 Stars Out Of 5
Production companies looking to adapt a Colleen Hoover book after It Ends With Us might want to consider Without Merit, a book that’s pretty solidly outside the romance genre. The book focuses on Merit Voss, an 18-year-old living in a deeply dysfunctional family system riddled with poor communication, mental illnesses, and secrets. She tries to come to terms with her family secrets while developing a relationship with Sagan Kattan, a young man with his own traumatic past.
Like many other Colleen Hoover books, Without Merit should never have been considered a romance. Merit’s slow, blossoming romance with Sagan is a subplot and the most stable part of this book. In all reality, the conflict in this Hoover novel is a family drama that delves into topics of mental health and trauma. Like most unhealthy family systems, the Voss family is riddled with secrets that threaten their public image.
Movies like This Is Where I Leave You, Little Miss Sunshine, and Shiva Baby prove there is a market for drama movies about deeply dysfunctional families, so there is a lot of potential for a Without Merit film adaptation. The key would be finding directors, producers, and actors who could all handle the serious topics – like sexual molestation, agoraphobia, suicide attempts, and parental neglect – with the care that they deserve.
Related It Ends With Us Fixed All My Issues With Colleen Hoover’s Book & I’m Thrilled
Though I went into the movie skeptical due to Colleen Hoover’s book, It Ends With Us fixes all my problems, delivering a powerful and moving story.
2 Confess By Colleen Hoover (2015)
Goodreads Rating: 4.09 Stars Out Of 5
Colleen Hoover’s 2015 novel Confess could be a great choice to adapt for the big screen after It Ends With Us’ success based on its strong premise and relatable themes. The story follows a woman named Auburn Reed who is rebuilding her life after losing her first love and custody of her child. She goes into an art studio for a job to meet Owen Gentry, a love interest with a secret that could derail her life.
Confess includes many tropes that romance audiences love, including love at first sight, a relationship risking someone’s reputation, a self-sacrificing protagonist, and forbidden love. The way the characters’ stories weave together could work well through a series of flashbacks, adding variation to the storytelling method.
The viewers, whether new or fans of Hoover’s books, will undoubtedly connect with the complex emotions and topics explored in the story, such as death, grief, substance use disorder, sexual assault, and custody battles. Additionally, because Owen is an artist who runs his own gallery, there’s potential for a movie to utilize the process of making art and the art pieces as a visual metaphor for the relationship in the story.
1 All Your Perfects By Colleen Hoover (2018)
Goodreads Rating: 4.24 Stars Out Of 5
The book All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover is probably one of Colleen Hoover’s most raw books outside of It Ends With Us and It Starts With Us. It is another book that has so much potential but is marketed wrong. This book is far from the frothy romance it looks like on the outside, delving instead into how a relationship can either survive or fail through the challenges of infertility.
However, it is highly beloved by Colleen Hoover fans due to the exploration of second chances in marriages. Additionally, both characters are flawed but trying to cope with heartbreak. If filmmakers approached this in a similar way to the movie version of It Ends With Us, they could create a beautiful and meaningful story that resonates with people with uteruses who want to get pregnant but can’t.
They would be best off marketing the movie with a little more tact, given the heaviness and complexity of the topics. Additionally, as It Ends With Us should have had, a movie adaptation of All Your Perfects would definitely need a massive trigger warning because the story deals with infertility, miscarriage, and cheating.
Sources: The New York Times, Box Office Mojo and Goodreads
Disclaimer: The messages expressed in these Colleen Hoover books do not necessarily reflect the opinions or values of the article writer, and this article should not be viewed as an endorsement.
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DramaRomance
Director Justin Baldoni Release Date August 9, 2024 Studio(s) Columbia Pictures , Wayfarer Studios , Saks Picture Company Distributor(s) Sony Pictures Releasing Writers Christy Hall , Colleen Hoover Cast Blake Lively , Justin Baldoni , Brandon Sklenar , Jenny Slate , Hasan Minhaj Runtime 130 Minutes Main Genre Romance Expand