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Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley stage an emotional love story in Hamnet.
On Tuesday, Aug. 26, Focus Features released the first trailer for Oscar-winning writer-director Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which stars Irish actors Mescal, 29, and Buckley, 35, as William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes.
The new movie, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, depicts a fictional account of the English playwright’s life. A synopsis for the movie describes it as “the powerful love story that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.”
The new trailer teases audiences with footage of Mescal playing Shakespeare as he writes Hamlet.
Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
Set during the Black Plague in 1580s England, Hamnet mixes actual history with reimagined circumstances. In real life, Shakespeare’s wife was named Anne Hathaway; the couple shared three kids, one of whom was named Hamnet and died at a young age.
Sam Mendes and Steven Spielberg are among Hamnet’s producers. The movie is director Zhao’s first film since her 2021 Marvel movie Eternals. The Nomadland Oscar winner co-wrote the script with O’Farrell, 53.
“I loved working on this film – Chloé and I wrote the screenplay together – and I can’t wait for it to be out in the world,” O’Farrell wrote in an Instagram post Aug. 25, as she shared images from the movie for the first time. “It’s a beauty, from start to finish.”
Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
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Mescal and Buckley both starred in 2021’s The Lost Daughter. This year, Mescal also stars in The History of Sound (in theaters Sept. 12). After this year, Mescal will tackle portraying Paul McCartney in Mendes’ four-part Beatles biopics. Buckley will star in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Frankenstein movie The Bride.
Hamnet is in select theaters Nov. 27, then nationwide Dec. 12.
