Focus Features Sets Thanksgiving Release for Chloé Zhao’s ‘Hamnet’ Starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal

Focus Features has announced a limited Thanksgiving release on November 27 for Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, ahead of a wide release beginning on December 12.

The film stars Oscar nominees Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter), Paul Mescal (Aftersun) and Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), and Joe Alwyn (The Brutalist).

Hamnet’is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, which has sold 2 million copies in the UK and US and has been translated into 40 languages. The adaptation is written by O’Farrell and Zhao.

The film tells the story of Agnes – the wife of William Shakespeare – as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her only son, Hamnet. A human and heart-stopping story as the backdrop to the creation of Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet.

The film is produced by Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nic Gonda, Sam Mendes, and Steven Spielberg; executive produced by Kristie Macosko Krieger, Laurie Borg, and Chloé Zhao.

Already a full year for the studio, the year began with The Ballad of Wallis Island at Sundance and a March 28 release, the Steven Soderbergh thriller Black Bag (also a March release) and will have two major players at the Cannes Film Festival: Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme in competition (and a May 30 release) and Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t! in the Midnight Sessions with an August 22 theatrical release. They’ll have the final Downton Abbey film in September, plus another new Yorgos Lanthimos with Bugonia (starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons once again), set for November 7 and Song Sung Blue, starring Hugh Grant and Kate Hudson, on Christmas Day.

With a prime platfrom release date, Hamnet is expected to play the fall festivals, kicking off with either Venice or Telluride, or, as is common for top awards contenders, both.