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Riz Ahmed has wanted to make a Hamlet movie since he was 16.The 42-year-old actor, plays Danish prince Hamlet in a new adaptation of the play, which relocates the tragedy to modern London, reimagining the royal court as the world of South Asian business dynasties and Riz admitted working on Hamlet has been a dream of his for decades.He told The Hollywood Reporter: “I was like a lot of teenagers. I was at school going through quite an emotionally raw and turbulent time when an amazing teacher took me under his wing and presented Hamlet to me, and it really reflected how raw and out of place I was feeling at that time.

Filmmaker Chloé Zhao has returned with her fifth feature film, “Hamnet,” a tragedy based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 bestselling novel, but the movie traces its origins to a meeting at a film festival between Zhao and her lead actor for the movie, Paul Mescal.

In a conversation with TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman at TIFF 2025, Zhao said she had been approached by Amblin Partners to adapt “Hamnet,” a bestselling novel and tragedy based on the real-life death of William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, at the age of 11. While she was considering it, she was convinced by Mescal to take the project when they met at the Telluride Film Festival.

“I met with him by the creek.

If you watch Aneil Karia’s Hamlet and are, too, stunned by the authenticity of Riz Ahmed‘s portrayal of a bleary-eyed and tormented protagonist, you should know it wasn’t entirely fake.

“I’d just become a father,” the British actor tells The Hollywood Reporter about the six-week night shoot across London in late 2023. “I was quite sleep-deprived with a newborn baby… it was super intense,” he laughs. “So there’s a kind of fever dream quality to the shoot that I think you also see in the film.”

Ahmed’s grief-stricken performance anchors Karia and scriptwriter Michael Lesslie’s contemporary take on Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark. The film begins with our protagonist, Ahmed, carrying out his late father’s funeral rites while verses are read from an ancient Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. In modern London, we follow an erratic Hamlet reckoning with his uncle’s decision to marry his mother,...

Riz Ahmed is once again teaming up with Aneil Karia, this time for a new adaptation of “Hamlet.” And for the actor, Shakespeare’s classic story is more resonant than ever because entire swaths of people are now being made to feel “powerless” and “gaslit.”

Karia’s take on the classic play is set in present-day London, but still maintains the original text. Ahmed stars as the Dane and, sitting down with TheWrap’s Steve Pond at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, he and Karia delighted in the fact that Ahmed is just one of the many Hamlets in pop culture right now.

Oscar Isaac’s documentary “King Hamlet...

It grossed $69 million during its theatrical release, and now Anya Taylor-Joy’s Viking epic is a hit on the Netflix global streaming top ten chart.

Taylor-Joy was a hit on streaming in 2020 with the buzzy Netflix prestige miniseries The Queen’s Gambit. She made streaming waves early in 2025 as well, starring on AppleTV+ alongside Miles Teller in the hit romantic sci-fi thriller movie The Gorge.

Taylor-Joy’s theatrical films have also performed well on streaming services in 2025. Her satirical horror movie The Menu hit Netflix’s charts earlier this year, while her acclaimed box office flop Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga rebounded to reach the streaming charts on HBO Max....

Pack your checkbooks, Hollywood.

As studios and streamers decamp for the Toronto Film Festival, where they will premiere or screen many of the films that they hope will dominate awards season, they’ll also be on the hunt for some compelling movies to round out their slates. On paper, there’s plenty on offer, including new films from leading auteurs like Steven Soderbergh, Mona Fastvold, and Gus Van Sant, as well as star-driven projects featuring the likes of Angelina Jolie, Riz Ahmed, Michaela Coel, and Chris Evans. But plenty of films have arrived at TIFF with impressive pedigree only to be met with a shrug by audiences. Here are 15 films that seem likely to spark the most intense bidding wars.

Hamlet

Cast: Riz Ahmed, Joe Alwyn, Timothy Spall, Art Malik, Sheeba Chadha

Director: Aneil Karia

Sales Agent: WME Independent / CAA Media Finance

Why Buyers Are Circling: A bold new take on the Bard,...

Unlike Cannes or Berlin, Toronto has never been a market-first festival. But ahead of the launch of the official TIFF market next year, Toronto is looking to boost its industry credentials, positioning itself as the go-to for finished films — particularly mainstream English-language fare — without domestic distribution.

“Given the uncertainty in the movie exhibition space right now, [Toronto’s] going to give us a real snapshot of what the people who release movies think can work in the marketplace,” says Steven Soderbergh, who brings his latest, The Christophers, to TIFF without a distributor. “There’s no better barometer of what’s happening than a bunch of people who have to put movies out into theaters, making decisions about what they think can succeed.”

With prestige titles, bold debuts and star-driven dramas looking for homes, TIFF 2025 could prove a decisive test for the independent film business.

The Christophers

Director Steven Soderbergh

Stars Ian McKellen,...

WePresent, the arts platform of WeTransfer, has unveiled Academy Award and Emmy Award winner Riz Ahmed as its fifth guest curator, marking a reunion between the multi-hyphenate artist and the platform that helped bring his Oscar-winning short film “The Long Goodbye” to life.

The guest curatorship program allows WePresent to champion emerging and overlooked talent while collaborating on projects designed to spark cultural conversations. Previous guest curators include Olafur Eliasson, Russell Tovey, Marina Abramović and Solange Knowles.

The year-long collaboration will focus on what it means to “stretch culture” in contemporary society, with Ahmed championing fresh perspectives and disruptive stories across all corners of the arts. The curatorship launches with a manifesto and features spotlighting five artists: Imran Peretta, Nadir Nahdi, Raf Saperra, Sarah Ghazal Ali and Warda Mohamed.

“The filter I use for most creative choices has two parts to it. Does it stretch me? Does it stretch culture?...

It’s good to be the king — make that the prince.

One of Shakespeare’s most-adapted plays, there have been over 50 film versions made of Hamlet — from classics like Laurence Olivier’s 1948 version, which won Best Picture and Best Actor, to Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film, starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, to family friendly interpretations like Disney’s The Lion King.

This year is no exception, with a trio of films inspired by the famous play making the rounds of the fall festivals, each with its own spin on the classic: Riz Ahmed's Hamlet, Oscar Isaac's King Hamlet documentary, and Chloé Zhao's Hamnet. There's even an animated Japanese version: Scarlet,...

The 52nd Telluride Film Festival is now in the books. Margot Robbie, Ryan Coogler, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo, Rian Johnson, Janet Yang, Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall were among those who came just to watch movies. Screenings were introduced with a group meditation (Chloé Zhao), a song (Jesse Plemons) and a wave (man of few words Bruce Springsteen). Adam Sandler and Emma Stone posed for photos in the streets with ecstatic local schoolkids. And the Oscar race came into clearer focus.

Below, you can read my biggest awards-related takeaways from the fest.

Four high-profile films that already have U.S. distribution had their world premieres in Telluride: Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix), Bugonia (Focus), Hamnet (Focus) and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century). How did they go over?

Focus has plenty of cause for celebration, as both Bugonia and Hamnet played like gangbusters and look almost certain to...

Kaleidoscope Film Distribution has released the film adaptation of Hamlet starring Ian McKellen onto YouTube. Directed by Sean Mathias, the adaptation was produced by the late Bill Kenwright's Bk Studios, who recently produced McKellen in new film The Critic. Producer Bill Kenwright sadly died in October 2023, aged 78. The movie was originally released in UK cinemas in February 2023. Watch Hamlet starring Ian McKellen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMpBsypjrBM&t=1s McKellen reprises his lead role as Hamlet, and co-stars with the stage cast of the 2021 Theatre Royal Windsor production of the play, including Frances Barber (The Unfriend, King Lear,...

Paul Mescal’s New Historical Drama Is a Rotten Tomatoes Hit(Photo Credit –Facebook)

After venturing into superhero territory with the underwhelming Marvel film Eternals in 2021, Academy Award-winning writer-director Chloé Zhao has made a glorious comeback with her latest feature. Get ready with a box of tissues, because you may need them on December 12, 2025, when the historical drama Hamnet releases nationwide in the U.S.

Starring Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) and Paul Mescal (Gladiator II) in the lead roles, Hamnet recently premiered at the 2025 edition of the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The film has already debuted with a stellar critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Read on to find...

The Oscar race has one established frontrunner, which is often not the ideal place to be. As it happens, “Sinners” (Warner Bros.) auteur Ryan Coogler was checking out the competition at Telluride this Labor Day weekend, which unveiled a healthy slate of Oscar contenders.

Best Picture Contenders

One movie emerged that could challenge “Sinners” in multiple categories: Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) delivered heart-wrenching family drama “Hamnet” (Focus), featuring two powerhouse lead performances from Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley as William and Agnes Shakespeare. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 bestseller, the film tracks their early romance and marriage and the birth of three children, two girls and a boy, Hamnet. Their lives are rocked by grief when they lose Hamnet to the plague, and Shakespeare buries himself in writing the tragedy “Hamlet.”

The directors will support Zhao’s meticulous period craftsmanship and scriptwriting with O’Farrell, along with the tech categories Cinematography,...

Irrfan Khan’s demise at the age of 53 came as a severe jolt, leaving a void in the industry that will be difficult to fill. There has perhaps never been a Hindi film actor so unanimously regarded as the best of his generation. The actor was not just an acclaimed actor in Bollywood but had become a familiar face internationally as well.

“I try to do films which leave a longer impact, which speak to you and which keep coming back to you after you’ve seen them. I prefer movies that have a longer relationship,” he told one interviewer. Irrfan Khan has left us with a variety of feature...

Riz Ahmed has challenged long-held interpretations of Shakespeare’s most famous character.The 42-year-old actor, plays Danish prince Hamlet in a new adaptation of the play, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and is set to screen at the Toronto Film Festival. Riz’s new production relocates the tragedy to modern London, reimagining the royal court as the world of South Asian business dynasties. The actor has now insisted Hamlet is not a man paralysed by indecision but one “continuously active” and psyching himself up for revenge.Directed by Aneil Karia, 40, the film also trims Shakespeare’s text to focus squarely on its protagonist, omitting supporting figures such as Horatio.

Riz Ahmed thinks Shakespearean scholars don’t get what makes Hamlet tick. The Danish prince, he

says, isn’t on the verge of suicide in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy — he’s trying to man up.

“It’s not ‘Should I end it all?’” says Ahmed, who speaks the iconic lines in a new “Hamlet” that debuted at the Telluride Film Festival and will screen at the Toronto Film Festival. “It’s about ‘Are we willing to live under injustice? Do you fight or do you give up?’”

Nor does Ahmed accept the usual portrayal of Hamlet as a man plagued by indecision. On-screen,

his Hamlet is a coiled ball of outrage waiting for the right moment to avenge his father. “He’s continuously active,” Ahmed says. “He’s investigating, strategizing, gathering evidence while he psyches himself up to do the unthinkable.”

This adaptation of “Hamlet” breaks with tradition in other ways,...

As the year nears its end, a series of outstanding productions are also gearing up towards their theatrical debut, one of which is the award-winning Chloé Zhao’s powerful adaptation starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. Titled Hamnet, the film is based on Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel of the same name, which tells the touching story about the life of William Shakespeare and his wife, AgnesShakespeare, following the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet.

Hamnet had its world premiere at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival, which took place from August 29 to September 1, 2025, in Colorado. Afterward, it’s set to have a limited theatrical release in the US on November 27, 2025, courtesy of Focus Features,...

Five days into the fall film festivals, we’ve got ourselves a real awards season. Maybe even a monster awards season.

And for that, we might have to thank a couple of iconoclastic international filmmakers and a pair of British works of literature written in 1600 and 1818, or thereabouts.

That’s the conclusion after the first five days of the Venice Film Festival and the first three (out of only four) of the Telluride Film Festival, where Guillermo del Toro’s epic adaptation of “Frankenstein” and Chloé Zhao’s emotionally devastating Shakespeare riff “Hamnet” debuted and cemented themselves as formidable contenders.

Some of the high-profile films that have premiered so far...

Hamnet is a great work of empathy and the best film Chloé Zhao has made by quite a wide margin. Adapted from the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who returns here as co-writer, the film serves as a lovely reminder of why art is important, how watching something can make you feel, make you understand, make you consider.

The film’s plot is simple: young Agnes (Jessie Buckley) marries her village’s master tutor William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and they have three children––an eldest girl named Eliza (Freya Hannan-Mills) and younger twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Judith barely survived birth, and Agnes fears she will lose her second daughter at any moment.

A new William Shakespeare movie directed by an Oscar winner has debuted with a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. Shakespeare is perhaps the most notable playwright in the English language, having penned iconic Elizabethan dramas, histories, and comedies including Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet.

Innumerable movies adapted from Shakespeare plays have hit the screen from the very beginning of the art form. These range from early silent movies like 1916's The Merchant of Venice to modern adaptations such as 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You(reimagining The Taming of the Shrew) and 2006's She's the Man (reimagining Twelfth Night).

However, there are...

Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel of the same name, “Hamnet” is an emotionally pulverizing drama that imagines how the death of William Shakespeare and Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway’s only son might have inspired the creation of his greatest tragedy; think of it as “Shakespeare in Agony.” And yet the violent beauty of this film, which rips your soul out of your chest so completely that its seismic grief almost feels like falling in love or becoming a parent, is that it’s as much about the experience of having a child as it is about the experience of losing one.

More to the point, “Hamnet” is a wrenching story about how those two experiences — so unalike in dignity — might ultimately be catalyzed by the same process of emotional transfiguration. In the first, your heart is placed into someone else’s body. In the second, that body is subsumed into the world.

Poetry courtesy of The Boss and The Bard is filling the mountain air at the Telluride Film Festival.

Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics can be as potent as William Shakespeare’s verse.

When Jeremy Allen White performs ‘Born In the USA’ during Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the audacity of it sends a charge of electricity right through you.

And listen: Springsteen was in the audience for the film’s world premiere in the Werner Herzog Theatre. No pressure then, right? Oprah Winfrey was also in the house. Such a picture of grace. She had exited her limo and led her posse to the back of the queue where some of us had been waiting in line for over an hour. A couple of people bet that she’d sashay to the front.

Nope, didn’t happen. Oprah Winfrey took her place behind us.

Jeremy Allen White as...

William Shakespeare left no instructions as to the right way future dramatists should tell “Hamlet.” We have only the text, which reveals fresh insights each time someone new recites it. With director Aneil Karia’s interpretation, we get the great Riz Ahmed in the role, which is reason enough for the film to exist — but it’s perhaps the only one in a remake that might better have chosen not to be.

Transposed to modern-day London, where Hamlet belongs to a wealthy family of South Asian heritage, Karia’s version preserves the original text, albeit abridged, reordered and occasionally spoken by different characters entirely. Screenwriter Michael Lesslie oversaw this adaptation, which carries with it unfortunate relics of an earlier time — not the iambic pentameter, which is sacred, but references to kings and lords and a royal society that doesn’t translate one bit to the modern corporate world.

Here, Elsinore...

Cinematic Shakespeare adaptations are a tricky proposition in 2025, doubly so when talking about his best known works like “Hamlet.” For one, there’s already an endless pile of filmed takes on the material to revisit, many of which hold up quite well. If you’re looking for a faithful adaptation of the original drama, you won’t do better than Kenneth Branagh’s definitive 1996 film, which contains the entire Shakespearean text. On the other end of the spectrum, everything from “The Lion King” to “Sons of Anarchy” has fed elements of the original story to modern audiences who didn’t even have to realize they were watching Shakespeare. And with over 50 other filmed versions of the text, you can find just about any middle ground between those two extremes that your heart desires.

Whenever a new “Hamlet” movie comes out, the first question is always “why?” And the answer is always “actors.

This latest version of Hamlet begins with a death ritual. Riz Ahmed, as the title character, washes his father’s body, surrounded by his uncle, Claudius, and other men as a Hindu priest recites from the Bhagavad Gita. That scene instantly and viscerally grounds you in the title character’s overpowering grief. It’s an inspired addition to Shakespeare’s play, and proof of how illuminating it can be to tweak one of the world’s masterpieces.

Unfortunately, Aneil Karia’s film gets rockier from there. Setting the story in a South Asian community in London works beautifully. Here the play-within-a play that acts out Claudius’ murder of Hamlet’s father is a dance by a South Asian troupe, an eloquent touch. It’s the details of transporting the play to the present day and trying to make it cinematic that are often jarring and clumsy. One of the cringey...

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a new version of “Hamlet” premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday, because this particular Shakespeare tragedy seems to be in the air these days. Most notably, Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet,” another Telluride premiere and one of the most anticipated films of the fall, deals with the writing of the play after the death of his young son, Hamnet – making note of the fact that in Shakespeare’s time, the two names were more or less interchangeable.

Beyond that, actor Patrick Ball, one of the stars of the breakout TV series “The Pitt,” starred this spring and summer in the title...

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!”

William Shakespeare needs no introduction. The celebrated Elizabethan poet and playwright has had an overarching impact on art and literature for centuries. “Macbeth,” often called by other names such as “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “The Scottish Play”, is one of the four classic tragedies penned by Shakespeare. Based in medieval Scotland, the play is considered a pinnacle of Renaissance Humanism. At its core, “Macbeth” chronicles the meteoric rise and subsequent downfall of the titular Scottish general.

The Telluride Film Festival is one of awards season's biggest stages, and Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao delivered a command performance on its opening night. The Nomadland filmmaker's latest feature, Hamnet — which stars Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes — took a first bow in front of an eager audience of critics and film fans, who spilled out of the theater feeling shaken and stirred.

"The most devastating movie I've seen in years," reads the headline of Bilge Ebiri's rave New York review of Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel that imagines what might have happened in the Shakespeare marriage following the death of...

The 52nd Telluride Film Festival is barely more than a day old and already there is a strong theme running through the new films here: art as a life altering experience. In Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, depression causes the superstar musician to go deep into his writing and recording a new album in order to find his true self. In Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays a mega movie star who takes a detour from his career in order to discover what has passed him by in his personal life. And now in Hamnet Chloé Zhao navigates how love and death collide at the intersection of William Shakespeare’s greatest play.

It’s a powerful argument all around about how the human experiences can transform into art and storytelling , and it is front and center in these films, with Hamnet perhaps being the most vivid example of them all. Based...

Before audiences were treated to Chloé Zhao’s latest film, “Hamnet,” at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday evening in the Colorado town, the Oscar-winning director commanded the room with sheer silence before stating, “I’m so happy our baby is taking its place in the world amongst the mountains.”

Little did those in attendance know we were about to embark on a devastating journey through death and grief like no other.

Based on the bestselling book by Maggie O’Farrell and adapted by Zhao and O’Farrell, “Hamnet” follows the imagined story of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), as they fall in love and have...

The first time we see Agnes (Jessie Buckley), she’s curled up asleep at the mossy base of a giant tree. Dressed in red and purple, she looks like a flower, or perhaps an organ — a heart out in the open, ready to be plucked up and held close. Next to her lies a void, a hollow beneath the roots so deep and so dark that it looks like nothing at all.

In Hamnet, the latest film from Oscar-winning Nomadland director Chloé Zhao, the two always go hand in hand: joy and fear, love and loss. One feeds into the other in a cycle as old as life itself, and unavoidable. But just as her William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) turns the pain of being caught between the two into the masterpiece that is Hamlet, Zhao harnesses those elements into something gorgeous and cathartic.

The first time Will sees Agnes, she...

By some perverse coincidence, this year at the Telluride Film Festival there were three movies about William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” but it’s the one spelled with the “n” that confronts the specter of death most profoundly — and packs the greatest catharsis.

As conceived by “Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet” is so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating at times. Jessie Buckley delivers a heroic performance as Shakespeare’s wife Agnes and the mother of his children — although as presented, she could be the mother of us all — the grounded, near-shamanic spirit forced to accept the death of her son, Hamnet. Meanwhile, Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare, who pours his grief into “the Danish play,” but both actor and character are eclipsed by the feminine elements of this story.

Here, I’m thinking about a conversation I had with its creator a couple of years ago. We were talking about the filmmaker Agnès Varda,...

Marianne Faithfull had a singular career in music, so she deserves a singular documentary. But “Broken English,” the doc about Faithfull that premiered on Saturday at the Venice Film Festival, is so singular that it’s likely to be wildly divisive. It certainly was at a Venice press screening late Friday night, which saw a steady stream of walkouts during the film but robust applause from the viewers who stuck around.

Disruptive and distracting, charming and challenging, the film by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth uses a fictional framework to tell a true story, even as it questions the nature of truth and strips away the usual signposts in a nonfiction film.

In a quaint theater in the Colorado mountains, where we lay our scene, a clear Oscar contender emerges.

Before Chloé Zhao’s anticipated drama “Hamnet” held its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday, the director took the stage with her two stars, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, to lead the audience in a meditation before they took in her heartbreaking story. In a room that included some of her peers like “Sinners” director Ryan Coogler and actor-turned-director Harris Dickinson, the immaculate adaptation unspooled before the sold out crowd and captivated the audience.

The moving and fictionalized portrait of grief and loss that inspired one of history’s most treasured playwrights held the audience in its grip for 125 minutes, where audible sounds of sniffles and crying filled the venue, testifying to the film’s emotional depth. Moreover, the evening cemented a respect for Zhao as one of today...

There are a lot of lessons that Elvira Lind’s “King Hamlet” seems to want viewers to learn: The timeless language of Shakespeare remains a source of wisdom for those going through hard times. Life is a cycle, and the sting of watching loved ones pass away can be soothed by the joy of welcoming new babies into the world. And the opinions of critics are far less valuable than the people who pour their own blood, sweat, and tears into making art together. But even if it sets its sights on loftier ideas, there’s one point that it drives home far more than any other: even when he’s Going Through It, Oscar Isaac is incredibly handsome and charming.

All mortals have flaws, so I find it highly unlikely that Isaac is the first truly perfect human ever to walk the Earth. But after watching this breezy documentary directed by his wife,...

Exclusive: Riz Ahmed was after the Crown Jewels. Along with filmmaker Aneil Karia and screenwriter Michael Lesslie, he wanted to take Hamlet, the most iconic of British plays, and do it about Britain today from the perspective of South Asian Hindu culture.

It’s their up-to-the-minute version of Shakespeare’s centuries-old tale about a troubled Danish prince who is visited by the ghost of his dead father who asks him to avenge his death and follow the trail of blood all the way to his supposed favorite uncle, Claudius.

To cap it all, Claudius has gone and married his late brother’s wife.

None of that’s new. We know that story. We’ve seen the stage productions. Some were godawful, but in my time, I have seen Jonathan Pryce, Kenneth Branagh, Ben Wishaw, Rory Kinnear and a handful of others excel. Benedict Cumberbatch starred in what was known as...

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Chloé Zhao film, let alone one of her calm, meditative gems such as the Oscar-winning Nomadland or the quiet and contemplative The Rider. Now, after a stint in the world of Marvel with Eternals, she’s back with something that feels more in line with her earlier features — though this time, she’s adapting a hit novel. The first trailer for her new film, Hamnet, has dropped, and for those who’ve read the book, you’ll know this one is going to be an emotional gut-punch. Watch the trailer here:

Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed 2020 novel, the film...

King Hamlet, a new documentary that follows Oscar Isaac during the 2017 production of Hamlet at The Public Theater, is set to make its world premiere at this year's Telluride Film Festival. The annual festival is running from August 29-September 1 in Telluride, Colorado, and will screen the film on Friday and Saturday. The documentary, directed by filmmaker and Isaac's wife Elvira Lind, chronicles the Sam Gold-directed production, including its development process, Issac's handling of the material, and his personal life. During this period, the actor was dealing with the loss of his mother and the birth of his first child. Learn more about the film at Deadline. Other...

Exclusive: To play or not to play Hamlet, that was never the question for Oscar Isaac.

He had long wanted to take on one of the most complex and demanding roles ever conceived, the titular Prince of Denmark.

“Sam Gold — the director — and I had been working on Hamlet for about 12, 13 years,” Isaac tells Deadline. “We had worked with it at Julliard; we were both students there. We had done all the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern scenes as a one-act play, basically. And I had worked on it a lot. We would read it together, and so we always just knew it was going to happen at one point, and finally the time came to do it.”

‘Hamlet’ director Sam Gold, left, with Oscar Isaac Mad Gene Media

That time came in 2017 in a production for the Public Theater in New York with Gold directing. The process of how it came together,...

Telluride has announced its annual selection of films to play in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and they include Noah Baumbach’s Venice entry Jay Kelly, as well as Cannes picks Urchin from Harris Dickinson, and Joachim Trier’s grand prize winner Sentimental Value.

The festival also brings first looks from Chloé Zhao’s TIFF-bound Hamnet with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal,Aneil Karia’s Hamlet starring Riz Ahmed, Mary Bronstein’s Sundance hit If I Had Legs I’d Kick You featuring a career-best performance from Rose Byrne, and both Richard Linklater’s 2025 films Blue Moon from Berlinand Nouvelle Vague from Cannes.

Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” and Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” are among the films that will premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival, organizers announced on Thursday.

The festival begins on Friday in the Colorado mountain town, with the lineup traditionally kept under wraps until the day before screenings begin.

Documentaries screening at the festival include the premieres of two music-oriented docs — Morgan Neville’s “Man on the Run,” which chronicles the first decade of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career, and Ethan Hawke’s “Highway 99: A Double Album,” a three-hour-plus exploration of pioneering country singer, Merle Haggard. Ivy Meeropol’s “Ask E.

At the Telluride Film Festival, you never know who is going to stroll past you on the street, sit across from you on a gondola or catch a movie next to you in a cinema. This year, it might just be George Clooney, Werner Herzog, Jodie Foster, Jeremy Allen White, Wagner Moura, Claire Foy, Adam Sandler, Colin Farrell, Zoey Deutch, Dustin Hoffman, Riz Ahmed or one of the Skarsgards, father Stellan or son Alexander. They all have films in the lineup — which was announced by the fest on Thursday morning, includes over 60 features and shorts from more than 30 countries, and appears in full at the bottom of this post — and are expected to be in the Rockies over Labor Day weekend, along with subjects of documentaries that will be playing at the fest including David Remnick and E. Jean Carroll.

The highest-profile titles set to have their world premiere at...

The Boss is coming to Telluride.

20th Century’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere from director Scott Cooper, starring Jeremy Allen White as the title star, is set to launch its world premiere Friday night at the 52nd annual Telluride Film Festival, which announced its official schedule Thursday.

See the full lineup below.

In addition to Cooper, White, co-star Jeremy Strong and others, Bruce Springsteen himself will be on hand in the Rockies for the premiere of this much awaited film focusing on the making of his landmark album Nebraska.

Colin Farrell in ‘Ballad of a Small Player’ Netflix

Other world premieres include Netflix’s Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell as a man caught up in the gambling mecca of Macau. It is directed by Edward Berger, who was in Telluride last year launching his Oscar-winning Conclave that also landed a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

‘Hamnet’ Focus...

Straight off her low-budget Best Picture winner “Nomadland,” writer/director Chloé Zhao next released a massive blockbuster: Marvel’s “Eternals.” However, Zhao said the financial freedom didn’t exactly lead to an influx of creativity.

“’Eternals’ had, like, an unlimited amount of money and resources. And here we have one street corner that we can afford, to [stand in for] Stratford …. ‘Eternals’ didn’t have a lot of limitations, and that is actually quite dangerous,” Zhao told Vanity Fair in an August. 22 interview. “Because we only have that street corner [in ‘Hamnet’], suddenly everything has meaning.”

Zhao is currently on the press tour for “Hamnet,” her highly anticipated next feature. Aside from “Eternals” (which...

Universal Pictures has released the first teaser trailer for ‘Hamnet,’ the highly anticipated new drama from Academy Award®-winning writer and director Chloé Zhao. Opening in cinemas on January 9th, the film explores the untold story that forever changed the course of literary history.

Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel, ‘Hamnet’ tells the powerful and intimate love story of Agnes Hathaway (played by Jessie Buckley) and William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) — a bond tested by love, loss, and the echoes of immortality. At its heart lies the inspiration behind one of the greatest works ever written: Hamlet.

The atmospheric first look teases sweeping cinematography and Zhao’s signature lyrical style,...

Focus Features acquired Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning novel, in August 2024 and today they’ve unveiled the first official teaser trailer. The period drama stars Oscar nominee Paul Mescal (Aftersun) as William Shakespeare and Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) as his wife, Anne Hathaway, also referred to as Agnes.

“From Academy Award-winning writer/director Chloé Zhao, Hamnet tells the powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet,” reads Focus Features’ synopsis.

Two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn also star. Author Maggie O’Farrell co-wrote the screenplay with Chloé Zhao, and Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda,...

Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet is coming soon!

The film will have a limited release in theaters on November 27, and will then open to theaters nationwide on December 12.

The movie, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, stars Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley as William and Agnes Shakespeare.

Joe Alwyn stars as Bartholomew, while Jacobi Jupe is Hamnet alongside Emily Watson, Jack Shalloo and David Wilmot.

Here’s the plot summary, via Variety: “Hamnet tells the story of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, as they grieve the loss of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. The film follows the couple as they attempt to reconcile with the loss of their child, and how...

The teaser trailer has been unveiled for Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, starring Paul Mescal, Olivier Award-winner Jessie Buckley, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn. The movie will receive a limited Thanksgiving release on November 27th, ahead of a wide release beginning on December 12th. From writer/director Zhao, Hamnet tells the love story that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet. The film is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 New York Times bestselling novel, which has sold 2 million copies in the UK and US and has been translated into 40 languages. O'Farrell worked with Zhao on the film's screenplay. The book has also been adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti,...

“Tell me a story,” William Shakespeare’s wife asks him. “What story would you like?” he replies. “Something that moves me,” she says. Now there’s a setup.

Here is the first teaser trailer for Hamnet, Oscar winner Chloé Zhao story of love and loss that inspired the creation of the Bard’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet. Have a look above.

Aftersun Oscar nominee Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare, and The Lost Daughter Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley is his wife, renamed Agnes in the book and movie. The film is about her struggles to come to terms with the loss of their only son, Hamnet.

Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn also star in the pic, which has its Canadian premiere at Toronto next month. Nomadland double Oscar winner Zhao directs based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who adapted the script along with the filmmaker.

Related: Venice Film Festival Lineup: Kathryn Bigelow,...

"What do you see?" "He will live..." Focus Features has unveiled the teaser trailer for the film Hamnet, a highly anticipated new film coming up this awards season. Hamnet is the latest feature directed by Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao, following her work on Marvel's Eternals, this is her getting back to making something more meaningful and intimate. Hamnet tells the powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet. Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes Shakespeare, Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare set in the 16th century. It's telling the story of Agnes - the wife of William Shakespeare - as she struggles to come to terms...