Focus Features Boards Chloé Zhao’s Adaptation Of ‘Hamnet’ Starring Jessie Buckley And Paul Mescal

Focus has taken worldwide rights on Chloé Zhao’s next film Hamnet starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley and will be a creative partner on the project. Universal Picture International will handle international distribution for the studio.Universal Pictures will handle international distribution. Zhao will direct with Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn rounding out ensemble.

Based on Maggie Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Zhao co-adapted the script with O’Farrell. Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Sam Mendes and Steven Spielberg will produce with Kristie Macosko Krieger, Nic Gonda and Laurie Borg will exec produce.

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The New York Times bestselling historical fiction novel imagines the story of Agnes – the wife of the world’s most famous writer, William Shakespeare – as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her only son, Hamnet. The novel charts the emotional, familial and artistic consequences of that loss, bringing to life a human and heart-stopping story as the backdrop to the creation of The Bard’s Hamlet.

The novel won a National Book Critics Circle Award and The Women’s Prize for Fiction. Hamnet has sold 2 million copies in the UK and US and has been translated in to 40 languages.

Focus Features upcoming slate includes Piece By Piece, an animated biopic from Morgan Neville about the life of multifaceted global superstar Pharrell Williams told through the lens of LEGO bricks, Robert Eggers’ reimagining of Nosferatu, Edward Berger’s thriller Conclave, Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming crime-thriller Black Bag starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, Yorgos Lanthimos’s next film Bugonia starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons and the highly anticipated third instalment of the Downton Abbey franchise, among others.

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