Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the most famous plays in the world, and it’s been dramatized on stage and on film countless times — so, do we really need another adaptation? Well, maybe, if it’s as potentially interesting as Ophelia, which was just announced and will star Naomi Watts and Daisy Ridley, of recent Star Wars: The Force Awakens fame.
The film Ophelia will be based on the book of the same name, by Lisa Klein, which places the character of Ophelia at center stage. In the original play, she’s a very minor character, one who falls in love with Hamlet. In the book — and, presumably, the film — we get to see her background, apparently as a motherless child who runs amok, and, once grown up, falls in love with Hamlet and eventually becomes pregnant with his child.
Ridley will play Ophelia, while Watts will play Queen Gertrude, mother to Hamlet. Claire McCarthy, who directed The Waiting City, is set to direct. Who knows when it’ll land in theaters, as Ridley is already tied to a few other post-Star Wars: Episode VIII films.