Hamnet (film)

Hamnet is a 2025 period drama film directed by Chloé Zhao, who co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O'Farrell, based on the 2020 novel by O'Farrell. The film dramatises the family life of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway as they cope with the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet. It stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal as Anne and William, alongside Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, and Noah Jupe in supporting roles.

Hamnet had its world premiere at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on 29 August 2025 and received a limited theatrical release by Focus Features in the United States and Canada on 26 November. It received a wide theatrical release on 5 December and was released by Universal Pictures in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2026. Critical reception was positive, with Buckley's performance receiving particular praise. The film received numerous accolades, including winning the Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Buckley at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, and eight nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress for Buckley. It was listed among the top ten films of 2025 by the American Film Institute.

Plot

A written prologue states that in Stratford, England, "Hamnet" and "Hamlet" were considered the same name.

Anne Hathaway is seen in the forest near a mysterious cave, where she summons a hawk with her falconry glove and gathers herbs. William Shakespeare works as a tutor to help pay his family's debt. He leaves his students after seeing Anne, and they share a moment. William's mother, Mary, informs him of rumours that Anne is the daughter of a forest witch who taught her herbal lore, which Anne later uses to heal a cut on William's forehead.

William visits Anne in the forest. When she asks for a story, he recounts the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, delighting her. Anne predicts William's future by holding his hand at his thumb's base, foretelling a successful future for him, and two children at her deathbed. The pair consummate their relationship, impregnating Anne, leading her family to disown her and forcing her to move in with William. The two marry, and Anne gives birth to Susanna in the woods.

William retaliates when his father, John, beats him for rejecting manual labour. Seeing William's frustration with writing, Anne suggests that her brother Bartholomew send him to London for a theatrical career, leaving her and Susanna in Stratford. A while later, a pregnant Anne tries to go outside to give birth, but William's family restrain her in the house, where she gives birth to twins Hamnet and Judith, the latter seemingly stillborn. Remembering her mother's death, Anne demands to hold the baby despite superstition, and Judith awakes.

11 years later, a now-successful William returns intermittently while the children grow up very close. The twins still believe they look similar and frequently try to trick their family members by wearing the other's clothes. Anne foretells that Hamnet, who wishes to join his father's theatre company, will flourish. Anne's hawk dies and is buried; she tells the children to make a wish to the hawk's spirit, who she says will carry them in its heart.

Returning to London, William wanders the streets during an outbreak of bubonic plague and watches a puppet show depicting the plague carrying people off to death. In Stratford, Judith contracts the plague. Hamnet evokes the tale of the hawk to encourage her and lies beside her, proclaiming he wants to take her place in an attempt to trick death. Judith recovers, but Hamnet falls gravely ill and dies; on his deathbed, he envisions himself on a stage calling for his mother, and Anne's hawk appears.

William rushes home and is distraught to find Hamnet lying in repose. His absence strains his marriage to Anne as they cope with Hamnet's death. William buys the largest house in Stratford and departs for London again. Anne holds his hand and says she now sees nothing. William rehearses Hamlet in London, but is frustrated with his cast's lack of passion. In despair, he leans over the edge of a jetty on the River Thames and recites his "To be, or not to be" monologue from the play.

Anne's stepmother Joan shows her a playbill for a production of Hamlet in London and upbraids her for marrying William, but Anne rebukes her. Anne and Bartholomew travel to London to see William. Finding him absent from his home, they resolve to attend the first performance of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre. Anne is initially offended at her son's name being profaned. Upon seeing William in the role of the ghost of Hamlet's father, she realizes that the play is a tribute to Hamnet, and is moved to tears by the scene between Hamlet and his father.

Backstage, William, having noticed Anne, breaks down in tears while listening to the play and returns to watch her from the wings. The play progresses through scenes of sword-fighting, fulfilling Hamnet's dream of an action role. During the scene when Hamlet dies, Anne reaches forward for the actor's hand, just as she had held William's hand when they first met, and the rest of the audience reaches toward him in turn.

Anne envisions little Hamnet on the stage, seen earlier as his dying vision. He moves from sadness to a smile before disappearing into the backstage through a hole like that of her mystical forest cave she frequented. For the first time since Hamnet's death, Anne laughs and smiles.

Cast

Production

A stage production of Maggie O'Farrell's novel was announced in November 2022, with the film rights having been acquired prior to publication by London-based Liza Marshall and her company Hera Pictures, who then partnered with Neal Street Productions. In April 2023, Chloé Zhao was hired to direct the film, and would write the screenplay alongside O'Farrell.

In May 2023, Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley entered negotiations to star in the film. Mescal confirmed in a January 2024 interview that he and Buckley would star.

Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin in London on 3 June 2024. Production instead began in Wales on 29 July 2024, and wrapped on 30 September. While most of the film was shot in Herefordshire, England, including the village of Weobley, scenes were also filmed in London at the Charterhouse, which served as the largest London location for the production. The scenes set at the Globe Theatre were shot at a replica of the building constructed by production designer Fiona Crombie at Elstree Studios backlot, rather than at Shakespeare's Globe (which Zhao and Crombie felt was too ornate for the film). Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson were added to the cast in August, and Steven Spielberg joined the film as a producer. Łukasz Żal was the cinematographer and Max Richter the film's composer, whose 2004 track "On the Nature of Daylight" is also used in the film.

Literary references

In addition to adapting O'Farrell's book, the film repeatedly quotes from the Old English Nine Herbs Charm, an alliterative spell (galdor) from Anglo-Saxon England. The film quotes from two translations of the text: one from philologist Joseph S. Hopkins and another from Stephen Pollington. Regarding the use of his translation in the film, Hopkins says "It is a great joy to play a role in presenting the Nine Plants Spell to such a large audience in the contemporary period, surely providing the most exposure the spell has received since Anglo-Saxon England".

Release

Focus Features acquired worldwide rights to Hamnet in August 2024, with its parent company Universal Pictures handling its international distribution; Indian distribution rights were acquired by Reliance Entertainment in December 2025 under a pre-existing output deal with Amblin Entertainment. It had its world premiere at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on 29 August 2025. In July 2025, the film was announced as part of the Gala Presentations lineup of the 50th 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the prestigious People's Choice Award. It was screened in the non-competitive section 'Grand public' of the 20th Rome Film Festival in October 2025 before its theatrical release, in the official selection of the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival on 27 October 2025 (for its Spanish premiere), and closed the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival on 5 November 2025.

The film received a limited theatrical release in the United States on 26 November 2025, ahead of a wide release one week later on 5 December 2025. It would later be released in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2026, and in Australia on 15 January. As of January 24, 2026, screening expanded to a total of 1,276 theaters and ranked #10 at the box office with $1.8 million for a domestic total approaching $18 million.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 324 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Breaking hearts and mending them in one fell swoop, Hamnet speculates on the inspiration behind Shakespeare's masterpiece with palpable emotional force thanks to Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal's astonishing performances." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".