If there is anything that years of experiments in the genre have taught us, it’s that it’s difficult to make a good film about a great man. The entrants in this genre, from A Beautiful Mind (2001) to A Complete Unknown (2024), vary widely. Some are excellent, many more are just OK, and a few are very bad. A film about someone who is already iconic presents a problem: Can a legend be humanized without losing their legendary quality or becoming a caricature of their most famous attributes? 

Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet took on one of the greatest giants of all, William Shakespeare, and successfully reimmortalized the bard in a way he has never been seen before — through the eyes of his wife, known to history as Anne Hathaway. Though the historical Shakespeare is elusive, a few things are known for sure: He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon; he married Hathaway in the same town when he was 18 years old, and she was 26 years old (and pregnant with his child). He had three children: Susanna, Judith, and one son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 in 1596. Shakespeare wrote perhaps his most immortal play, Hamlet (the names, at the time, were interchangeable), around 1600.