Hamnet, director Chloe Zhao’s retelling of the death of Shakespeare’s son stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, and cameras finally ready to roll.
All the way back in November of 2023, we reported that Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao was getting ready to shoot her new film Hamnet in April 2024. Then we heard that the film was about to shoot in May of this year. Now we’re almost in August but it looks like production on Hamnet is finally underway, with Wales chosen as the location for the shoot.
Zhao’s Eternals may not have set the world alight, but her directing debut, 2020’s Nomadland, won the coveted duo of Best Film and Best Director. Frances McDormand also memorably scored a gong for Best Actress as well. Freed once again from the constraints of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we’re hoping that Zhao can produce something spellbinding with Hamnet, a story based on Maggie O’Farrell’s book of the same name. It’s a fictional story that explores Shakespeare and his wife coming to terms with the loss of their 11-year-old son Hamnet to the plague according to Screen Daily.
Zhao has certainly assembled a leading duo capable of doing great things: Paul Mescal will play a young William Shakespeare while Jessie Buckley will play his wife, Anne Hathaway (no, not that one). Chiara Atik is on writing duties. O’Farrell’s book, released in 2020, has also been adapted to a stage play, which premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2023 and is currently playing in London’s West End.
Spielberg’s Amblin Pictures is producing this one, and while there’s no news on a potential release date yet, we’re holding out hope that we’ll see this one in 2025. We’ll keep you posted on that. Beyond Hamnet, we’re still optimistic that Zhao might return to the vampire western project that she was lining up a couple of years ago.
We’ll bring you more on Hamnet as we hear it.
