First look at Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley in Hamnet by Chloe Zhao revealed

After the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Eternals (2021), Chloe Zhao is next coming up with Hamnet, a film based on Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 award-winning novel of the same name. The film was announced in 2023, with Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley confirmed to be attached to the film the following year. We finally have the first-look photos of the film's leads, which Vanity Fair revealed in a recent interview with the film's team.

Paul Mescal will play William Shakespeare, and Jessie Buckley is in the role of his wife, Agnes Shakespeare. The story is a fictional account of the life of the couple after their only son, the titular Hamnet, dies. British child actor Jacobi Jupe is portraying him.

The film's production wrapped up last year in Wales, though it was first scheduled to begin early in London. Other than Mescal and Buckley, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jack Shalloo, and more are in the movie as well.

Additionally, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, and Nicolas Gonda are co-producing the movie.

There will be a limited theatrical release on November 27, 2025, and it will expand nationwide a couple of weeks later, on December 12, 2025. Before that, it will premiere at the 50th annual Toronto International Film Festival, scheduled between September 4 and 14, 2025.

The first-look photos of Hamnet captures joy and tragedy

Jessie Buckley will play Agnes Shakespeare in the movie. (Image via Focus Features)

The Vanity Fair interview presents six new images of Hamnet, where the first one features Jessie Buckley's Agnes, who appears to be crying and praying in a crowd of people. The crowd appears to be gathered in front of a stage, suggesting a play may be in progress. She says of filming:

"For the first two days in the Globe, I was genuinely lost. I felt untethered. You’re at the mecca of where Hamlet is born—everything that we’ve gone through was culminating to this point."

The next photo is a backshot of Paul Mescal as Shakespeare, examining a painting of a treeline on the stage. Zhao says that she arrived in the Colorado Mountains when Paul was filming Aftersun (2022), another tragedy that highlights the depression of a father.

Then a couple of close-ups follow, one featuring Jessie Buckley and the other Paul Mescal, in the Vanity Fair article. There's another image of Buckley where she is standing in an empty room. Her expression indicates that she is remembering when Hamnet used to be there.

About Paul, Buckley said:

"It’s no mean feat to step into the shoes of Shakespeare and to bring so much humanity to him, and that’s what Paul, as a person, threadsHe has this greatness about him in an old-school way, like Richard Burton had. He’s got a weight that is bigger than his years, and you can really lean on it. Working with him, I was like, ‘Oh, I want to meet you so many times in my life in different ways and work together.’ It felt so alive. Anything was possible."