Chloe Zhao‘s next film “Hamnet” has secured a prime awards season release date.
Focus Features, which is backing the Shakespeare-era historical drama, will open in limited release on Nov. 27 before expanding nationwide on Dec. 12. “Hamet” lands in select theaters on the same day as Pixar’s “Zootopia 2” and hopes to serve as counterprogramming when the film widens its footprint in mid December, a week before James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and Paramount’s “SpongeBob: Search for SquarePants.”
Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, “Hamnet” fictionalizes the life of the Bard’s son who died at a young age and recounts the powerful love story that inspired the creation of “Hamlet.” Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley will star in the film as William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes alongside Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew and Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet.
Zhao wrote the screenplay with O’Farrell, whose book has sold two million copies in the United States and United Kingdom and has been translated into 40 languages. Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes are among the producers on “Hamnet,” which will be released overseas by Universal Pictures International.
Buckley will appear next in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “Frankenstein” spinoff “The Bride!” opposite Christian Bale. Mescal, currently off Broadway in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was officially cast as Paul McCartney in Mendes’ upcoming Beatles biopic. In the four-part epic, the Irish actor will share the screen with Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon.
Zhao is the second woman ever to win the Oscar for best director, for 2020’s “Nomadland.” Her other film credits include Disney’s “Eternals,” “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” and “The Rider.”
