Verity opened as the No. 1 film in America, achieving $32 million domestically and $62 million globally over the weekend of October 2 despite receiving a poor 34% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. But the movie had something going for it: a dedicated fan base of women who made Colleen Hoover’s novel a bestseller.

If that pattern sounds familiar, it should. In December 2025, The Housemaid became a hit movie largely because a predominantly-female audience discovered Freida McFadden’s novel on TikTok, bought millions of copies, and then embraced the movie.

In the case of Verity , 78% of the audience consisted of women .

Whether the popularity of Verity endures amid negative reviews remains to be seen, but the strong opening weekend is another example of how women are exerting their influence at the box office. Three years ago, Barbie proved that a movie marketed toward women could achieve blockbuster success. In recent months, several films have demonstrated that women are driving theatrical attendance across family animation, adult thrillers and female-led event movies.

‘Wuthering Heights’ Turned Romance Into An Event

Amid the flurry of massive opening weekends in 2026, it’s easy to forget that Wuthering Heights delivered the biggest opening of 2026 at the time over Valentine’s Day weekend, earning $34.8 million in its first three days. Women accounted for 76% of the North American audience . Half attended with a friend. Wuthering Heights was also a younger woman’s event movie: 63% attending the movie were ages 18 to 34 .

Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel has been adapted for the screen a number of times, perhaps most famously in William Wyler’s 1939 version. The novel’s themes have never strayed far from popular culture, as any Kate Bush fan can attest .

The 2026 version gave women many reasons to go to the theater, including Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead roles and a controversial interpretation by director Emerald Fennell. A Valentine’s Day opening day surely helped, as did an album of original songs by Charli XCX.

Moms Found Their Lives In ‘Toy Story 5’

While Wuthering Heights connected with younger women, Toy Story 5 found its strongest audience with moms. Women accounted for 57% of its opening audience, and moms far outnumbered dads. Seventy percent of moviegoers attended as part of a family.

In the movie, the character of Bonnie, introduced in Toy Story 3 , enters her tween years and becomes attached to a tablet while struggling to fit in with other girls. The toy Jessie emerges as the emotional center of a story about friendship, independence, and parents trying to decide what role technology should play in their children’s lives.

Many of the Millennials who grew up with Toy Story are now raising children themselves. They could take their kids to see the movie while watching a story about problems they encounter as parents. Toy Story 5 opened to an estimated $160 million, the strongest start in franchise history, before breezing past the $1 billion mark globally.

Its popularity, contrasted with the success of Wuthering Heights , underlined the reality that Hollywood cannot treat women as a homogenous demographic.

‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Updated A Cultural Touchstone

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is another example of a movie with a built-in female fan base, but its success was not assured, coming two decades after 20 th Century Fox distributed the screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel. But with most of the vaunted cast returning, the sequel opened to $77 million domestically and $233.6 million worldwide .

Women accounted for 76% of ticket buyers , but the age cohort skewed older. Women under 25 represented only 12% of the opening audience. The movie depended heavily on Millennials and older viewers who had a relationship with the original.

A full-court-press marketing campaigned leaned into the fashion and characters people remembered, most notably Miranda Priestly, the intimidating fashion magazine editor portrayed by Meryl Streep in the first movie. Anna Wintour, the former Vogue editor in chief who reportedly inspired the main character of Miranda Priestly, appeared alongside Meryl Streep on the cover of Vogue , as if to bless the movie.

The result eventually reached $693 million worldwide. The popularity of The Devil Wears Prada 2 showed that women will remember and reward a movie that respected them as an audience to begin with.

’Verity’ Connects With BookTok Millennials

Verity is reaching social-media-savvy Millennial women. Sixty-two percent of its opening audience was 25 to 44, with 25-to-34-year-olds forming the largest age group. And Verity is not the first Colleen Hoover novel to become a movie. It Ends with Us , released in 2024, was a strong financial success, and Regretting You , while less successful, still turned in solid numbers and became a streaming hit.

In all three cases, TikTok has become a proving ground. The BookTok subgroup, which has changed how books are marketed, has helped propel the success of authors such as Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros who write for a female audience.

And therein lies a potential present and future of movies marketed toward women: bubbling up on TikTok first as books, then becoming movies, as The Housemaid did. Streaming services like Netflix have been quick to capitalize on BookTok. Hollywood studios are also watching, learning and adapting.