Two-time Academy Award winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland,” “Eternals,” “The Rider”) will direct “Hamnet,” an adaptation of the critically acclaimed, award winning novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Amblin Partners, Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions and Book of Shadows announced on Tuesday.
Zhao and O’Farrell will write the script together.
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 Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet.
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Hamnet won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Fiction Prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards, and was also shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Liza Marshall (“The End We Start From,” “Mary and George”), Pippa Harris (“1917,” “Call the Midwife”) and Sam Mendes (“1917,” “Skyfall”) are producing.
Nic Gonda (“Tree of Life,” “Knight of Cups”) is executive producing on behalf of Book of Shadows. Jeb Brody, Amblin’s President of Production, and Mia Maniscalco, SVP Creative Affairs, will oversee the project on behalf of the studio.
Amblin and Neal Street worked together on the Academy Award-winning film “1917.”
O’Farrell is the author of the Sunday Times #1 bestselling memoir “I Am, I Am, I Am,” and nine novels: “After You’d Gone,” “My Lover’s Lover,” “The Distance Between Us,” which won a Somerset Maugham Award, “The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox,” “The Hand that First Held Mine,” which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, “Instructions for a Heatwave,” which was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award, “This Must be the Place,” which was shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Novel Award, and “Hamnet.” Her latest novel, “The Marriage Portrait,” was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023. She has also written two books for children – “Where Snow Angels Go” and “The Boy Who Lost His Spark.” She lives in Edinburgh.
Zhao is repped by CAA, co-managed by Pangea and Ilene Feldman Management, attorney Linda Lichter of Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler, Feldman & Clark, Inc., and IDPR. O’Farrell is repped by Conrad Williams at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency (Film/TV rights) and Victoria Hobbs at AMHeath.
Deadline first reported the news.