| Hamnet | |
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 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Chloé Zhao |
| Screenplay by |
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| Based on | Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Łukasz Żal |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Max Richter |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 126 minutes[1] |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $30–35 million[2] |
| Box office | $74 million[3][4] |
Hamnet is a 2025biographicalperiod film directed byChloé Zhao, who co-wrote the screenplay withMaggie O'Farrell, based on the2020 novel by O'Farrell. The film dramatises the family life ofWilliam Shakespeare and his wifeAgnes Hathaway[a] as they cope with the death of their 11-year-old sonHamnet.[6] It starsJessie Buckley andPaul Mescal as Agnes and William, alongsideEmily Watson,Joe Alwyn, andNoah Jupe in supporting roles.
Hamnet had its world premiere at the52nd Telluride Film Festival on 29 August 2025 and received alimited 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 byUniversal Pictures in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2026. Critical reception was positive, with Buckley's performance receiving particular praise. The film receivednumerous accolades, including winning theBest Motion Picture – Drama andBest Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Buckley at the83rd Golden Globe Awards, and eight nominations at the98th Academy Awards, includingBest Picture,Best Director andBest Actress for Buckley. It was listed among the top ten films of 2025 by theAmerican Film Institute.
A written prologue states that inStratford,England, "Hamnet" and "Hamlet" were considered the same name.[7]
William Shakespeare works as a tutor to help pay his family's debt. He leaves his students after seeingAgnes Hathaway summon a hawk with herfalconry glove, and they share a moment before he leaves. William's mother,Mary, informs him of rumours that Agnes is the daughter of a forest witch who taught herherbal lore, which Agnes later uses to heal a cut on William's forehead. Agnes spends much time in the forest, where there is a mysterious cave. William visits Agnes in the forest. When she asks for a story, he recounts the legend ofOrpheus and Eurydice, delighting her. Agnes 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 Agnes, leading her family to disown her and forcing her to move in with William. The two marry, and Agnes gives birth toSusanna in the woods.
William retaliates when his father,John, beats him for rejecting manual labour. Seeing William'sfrustration with writing, Agnes suggests that her brother Bartholomew send him to London for a theatrical career, leaving her and Susanna in Stratford. A while later, a pregnant Agnes tries to go outside to give birth, but William's family restrain her in the house, where she gives birth to twinsHamnet andJudith, the latter appearingstillborn. Remembering her mother's death, Agnes 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. Agnes foretells that Hamnet, who wishes to join his father's theatre company, will flourish. Agnes' 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 ofbubonic 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, heenvisions himself on a stage calling for his mother, and Agnes' hawk appears. William rushes home and is distraught to find Hamnet lying in repose. His absence strains his marriage to Agnes as they cope with Hamnet's death. William buysthe largest house in Stratford and departs for London again. Agnes holds his hand and says she now sees nothing. William rehearsesHamlet in London, but is frustrated with his cast's lack of passion. In despair, he leans over the edge of a jetty on theRiver Thames and recites his "To be, or not to be" monologue from the play.
Agnes' stepmother Joan shows her aplaybill for a production ofHamlet in London and upbraids her for marrying William, but Agnes rebukes her. Agnes and Bartholomew travel to London to see William. Finding him absent from his home, they resolve to attend the first performance ofHamlet at theGlobe Theatre. Agnes is initially offended at her son's name being profaned. Upon seeing William in the role of theghost 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 Agnes, 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, Agnes 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. She envisions Hamnet on the stage, seen earlier as his dying vision, now moving 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, Agnes laughs and smiles.
A stage production ofMaggie O'Farrell's novel was announced in November 2022,[8] with the film rights having been acquired prior to publication by London-based Liza Marshall and her company Hera Pictures, who then partnered withNeal Street Productions.[9] In April 2023,Chloé Zhao was hired to direct the film, and would write the screenplay alongside O'Farrell.[10]
In May 2023,Paul Mescal andJessie Buckley entered negotiations to star in the film.[11] Mescal confirmed in a January 2024 interview that he and Buckley would star.[12]
Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin inLondon on 3 June 2024.[13] Production instead began inWales on 29 July 2024, and wrapped on 30 September. While most of the film was shot inHerefordshire, England, including the village ofWeobley, scenes were also filmed in London atthe Charterhouse, which served as the largest London location for the production.[14][15] The scenes set at theGlobe Theatre were shot at a replica of the building constructed by production designerFiona Crombie atElstree Studios backlot, rather than atShakespeare's Globe (which Zhao and Crombie felt was too ornate for the film).[16][17][18]Joe Alwyn andEmily Watson were added to the cast in August, andSteven Spielberg joined the film as a producer.[19]Łukasz Żal was the cinematographer[20] andMax Richter the film's composer,[21] whose 2004 track "On the Nature of Daylight" is also used in the film.[22]
In addition to adapting O'Farrell's book, the film repeatedly quotes from the Old EnglishNine Herbs Charm, an alliterative spell (galdor) fromAnglo-Saxon England. The film quotes from two translations of the text: one fromphilologist 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".[23]
Focus Features acquired worldwide rights toHamnet in August 2024, with its parent companyUniversal Pictures handling its international distribution; Indian distribution rights were acquired byReliance Entertainment in December 2025 under a pre-existing output deal withAmblin Entertainment.[19][24] It had its world premiere at the52nd Telluride Film Festival on 29 August 2025.[25] In July 2025, the film was announced as part of the Gala Presentations lineup of the 50th2025 Toronto International Film Festival,[26][27] where it won the prestigiousPeople's Choice Award.[28] It was screened in the non-competitive section 'Grand public' of the20th Rome Film Festival in October 2025 before its theatrical release,[29] in the official selection of the70th Valladolid International Film Festival on 27 October 2025 (for its Spanish premiere),[30] and closed the38th Tokyo International Film Festival on 5 November 2025.[31]
The film received alimited theatrical release in the United States on 26 November 2025, ahead of a wide release one week later on 5 December 2025.[32] It would later be released in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2026, and in Australia on 15 January.[33] 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.[34]
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On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 86% of 321 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."[35]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 84 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[36]
Buckley's performance in particular was widely praised. David Fear ofRolling Stone opined that people "will be talking about Jessie Buckley's performance for years".[37]Screen Daily's Tim Grierson thought Mescal's role was similar to his previous work but "the regularly superb Buckley is revelatory as a wild creature who experiences the exhilaration of motherhood as well as the heartbreak of loss."[38] Johnny Oleksinski at theNew York Post wrote that "it's Buckley who's giving one of those rare turns that simply beggars belief. She swings back and forth from cast iron to porcelain. The actress is thunderous, playful, grounded and ethereal."[39]Peter Debruge [de] ofVariety declared the film to be "so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating at times" "featuring a heroic performance from Jessie Buckley".[40]
Bilge Ebiri ofVulture describedHamnet as "devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I've seen in years".[41] Angie Han ofThe Hollywood Reporter summed the film in the bottom line as "a tremendously acted heartbreaker".[42] Pete Hammond ofDeadline Hollywood wrote thatHamnet, "with its quiet determination to say much about how art is affected by life, is unlike anything else".[43]David Ehrlich ofIndieWire affirms that withHamnet, "it would be hard to imagine a more fitting tribute to Shakespeare's most widely interpreted play." On the performances, Ehrlich notes that the character of Agnes is not built on tropes but is "anchored by the primordial rawness of Buckley's astonishing performance." Whereas on Mescal's performance he found it to be "cathartically transcendent, because it at last rewards that search... as Will starts looking for his son in the space between life and death."[44]
Richard Lawson inThe Guardian gave it four stars, calling it a "poignant adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel with a stirring tearjerker ending".[33]BBC film critics Nicholas Barber and Caryn James deemed the movie to be the best of 2025 thanks to its rich and emotionally touching characters, its themes and its imagery.[45] On the contrary,The Wall Street Journal'sKyle Smith called it a "quintessential Oscar bait (highbrow foundation; maximal crying and emoting) but is dogged by intellectual anachronism."[46]
Hamnet received an assortment of awards and nominations, notably for the direction, performances, screenplay, score, cinematography, costumes, and production design.
The film won thePeople's Choice Award upon its premiere at the2025 Toronto International Film Festival.[47] It was subsequently nominated for eight nominations at the98th Academy Awards, six nominations at the83rd Golden Globe Awards (winning two), eleven nominations at the79th British Academy Film Awards, and eleven nominations at the31st Critics' Choice Awards. For her role in the film, Buckley won theGolden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and theCritics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress.[48][49][50][51][52][53] It was selected as one of the top 10 films of 2025 by theAmerican Film Institute.[54]
The names Hamnet and Hamlet were considered interchangeable in Elizabethan England
