Video: Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley Face Tragic Loss in New Trailer for HAMNET

The full trailer and official poster have been unveiled for Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, starring Paul Mescal, Olivier Award-winner Jessie Buckley, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn. The movie will receive a limited Thanksgiving release on November 27th, ahead of a wide release beginning on December 12th. It previously won the People’s Choice Award at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

The movie tells of the love story between William (Mescal) and Agnes (Buckley) Shakespeare during the 16th century, along with their beloved son Hamnet. But before too long, tragedy strikes the family, resulting in heartbreak that serves as inspiration for his play Hamlet.

The film is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 New York Times bestselling novel, which has sold 2 million copies in the UK and US and has been translated into 40 languages. O'Farrell worked with Zhao on the film's screenplay. The book has also been adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti, and was recently played in the West End in a production directed by Erica Whyman. 

In a Vanity Fair article, it was revealed that the movie recreates Shakespeare’s Globe theater during 1600, the year in which the original production of Hamlet takes place in the film. “For the first two days in the Globe, I was genuinely lost. I felt untethered,” said Jessie Buckley, who plays Agnes Shakespeare. “You’re at the mecca of where Hamlet is born—everything that we’ve gone through was culminating to this point.” Read the full story here and check out newly released first-look photos of the theater here.

In a previous interview with British Vogue, Mescal shared, "That book – it’s just devastating. I can’t wait. If I told a younger version of myself that this would be [shooting] this year, I wouldn’t believe it. I’ve obviously been in a film with Jessie before [Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter] but we’ve never shared the screen or a working process together. I think she’s one of our present-day greats. And Chloé is somebody I can’t wait to get in the weeds with, and get into the heads of those characters."

Check out the poster below: