Sam Mendes to Direct Hamnet,’ Tom Holland Set as Lead

Spider-Man star Tom Holland is teaming up with director Sam Mendes for an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell Novel ‘Hamnet.’

According to Production Weekly, the screenplay is being written by Chiara Atik, based on the bestselling historical fiction novel.

The ‘Hamnet’ film adaptation was first announced in June 2021 with no director at the helm. Mendes has now entered the picture. This is primo old-school Oscar bait that reminds me, in some fashion, to “Shakespeare In Love.”

Hamnet imagines the story of Agnes, the wife of the world's most popular writer, William Shakespeare, as she grapples with the loss of her only son, Hamnet. The novel follows the emotional, familial, and artistic ramifications of that loss, bringing to life a human and heartbreaking story set against the backdrop of Shakespeare's most famous play, Hamlet.

During the Black Plague in 1580s England, a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family's land while wearing a falcon on her glove and is well-known throughout the countryside for her unusual abilities as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, She becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

The project is still currently in development and doesn't have any release date nor is there any production scheduled.

This past year’s “Empire of Light” was Mendes’ last outing. It was failed Oscar-bait. Olivia Colman was great, Roger Deakins’ photography impeccable, but there was a strenuous hand to the whole thing as it dealt with the power of cinema, 1980s racism and mental illness.

Of course, with Mendes you just never know what you’re going to get. The British filmmaker does tend to hit the mark with critics, more so than not (“American Beauty,” “Skyfall,” “Road to Perdition,” “1917”). He’s also had his fair share of duds (“Spectre,” “Jarhead,” “Away We Go”).