Raves for Hamnet
The most British of artists is getting an Irish makeover – and critics are loving it.
And in late November, audiences will get a chance to see Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley as William and Agnes Shakespeare in the film Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s celebrated novel of the same name.
Do not go see this movie expecting the famous play with the “to be or not to be” speech. The title refers to the actual name of a real-life son the Shakespeares were raising in 1590s Stratford-upon-Avon – until a deadly plague swept the English countryside.
Which doesn’t exactly sound like the stuff of a box office hit. Especially when you add in period costumes and an old-time writer who has flummoxed generations of students.
And yet, O’Farrell – born in Derry, raised and educated in the U.K. – had a big hit with the book. And now the film version – starring two of Ireland’s brightest young acting talents – is getting raves at film festivals.
“The most shattering movie of 2025,” gushed a critic at Rolling Stone, while the reviewer for Vulture, New York Magazine’s entertainment website called Hamnet “The most devastating movie I’ve seen in years.”
Holiday cheer this is not. But it’s clear that Hamnet – directed by Chloe Zhao, who won an Academy Award in 2020 for Nomadland – will be getting lots of attention when this year’s awards season rolls around.
Which means Kerry-born Jessie Buckley may well get her second Academy Award nomination (after her first for The Lost Daughter) and fourth BAFTA nod. Next up for Buckley is The Bride! Set in 1930s Chicago, it’s about what happens when Frankenstein asks Dr. Euphronius to create a companion. The Bride! is directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and also starring Christian Bale.
As for Kildare-born Mescal, he is making a big-screen adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s musical Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater.
Irishman David Wilmot also appears in Hamnet as the famous playwright’s father. Wilmot will next be seen in Cork director Damian McCarthy’s horror film Hokum, also starring Severance Emmy Award nominee Adam Scott.
Next for “Guinness” Cast?
David Wilmot also appeared in the recent Irish Netflix saga House of Guinness, which presents itself as a “fiction based on true events.” Which means the very attractive cast, dashing costumes, and soap-opera plot twists were more important than historical accuracy.
Wilmot was joined in House of Guinness by fellow Irish actors Anthony Boyle, Fionn O’Shea and Niamh McCormick, among others.
Boyle’s next role (also for Netflix) is a very 21st century one. In the upcoming TV show The Altruists, Boyle stars as notorious crypto mogul – and now prisoner – Sam Bankman-Fried.
Dublin native Niamh McCormick has previously been reported as a cast member for an Irish vampire film called Feed, as well as a TV series called Cold Mind – a detective show set in a world wrestling with the ascent of AI.
Finally, Fionn O’Shea will be seen next in The Queen of Fashion, a biopic about influential British magazine editor Isabella Blow.
Dublin, Paris, Jersey
Offbeat writer-director Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, and Paterson) has assembled an impressive cast for a December film that spans the globe from Dublin to Paris to…New Jersey?
Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver head up a cast that also includes Irish actress Sarah Greene, in a family comedy-drama that will likely be “very quiet,” to use the director’s own words. As well as “very subtle, funny and sad.” Charlotte Rampling plays a Dublin mother to two daughters in one of the three semi-connected stories that make up this movie, which will be released on Christmas Eve – just in time for people who want a break from all that festivity and cheer in their holiday movies.
Sarah Greene, meanwhile, was most recently seen in the Paramount+ TV series Sexy Beast, an adaptation of the British crime movie of the same name.
Jack’s a Mummy
In other news from the world of reboots, Wicklow-reared actor Jack Reynor (Transformers: Age of Extinction, Sing Street) is starring in a new take on the classic Mummy franchise, which has also featured stars like Tom Cruise (2017), Brendan Fraser (three films between 1999 and 2008), and even Boris Karloff going back to the 1930s.
The latest Mummy flick – scheduled for release next Spring – features Reynor, Laia Costa and Veronica Falcón, and will be shot by horror director Lee Cronin (Evil Dead Rise) who vows: “This will be unlike any ‘Mummy’ movie you ever laid eyeballs on before. I’m digging deep into the earth to raise something very ancient and very frightening.” Reynor’s following project sends him off to Dublin for a bit of a Sing Street reunion. Reynor will appear in a musical comedy called Power Ballad with Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, to be directed by Irishman John Carney, perhaps best known for shooting Sing Street.
All Day-Lewis
The Day Lewis family is famously reclusive – at least until there are some movies to promote! Now it’s like you can’t get away from them.
Ronan Day-Lewis – son of Daniel, and his wife, Rebecca Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, by the way) – has directed his first movie called Anemone, that he co-wrote with his Oscar winning Dad.
Daniel Day-Lewis, of course, has starred in Irish cinematic classics like In the Name of The Father and The Boxer. In Anemone, Day-Lewis and Sean Bean play English brothers who reunite after many years apart.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Miller’s latest project is a documentary about the celebrated filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who famously directed Daniel Day-Lewis as the anti-Irish bigot ‘Bill the Butcher,’ renamed William Cutting in Gangs of New York.
Scorsese, of course, is famously Italian American. However, Miller’s documentary – on Apple TV+ – looks to be quite comprehensive (five episodes) and so should make it clear that the Irish have always played a big role in Scorsese’s cinematic universe. There’s Gangs of New York, of course (with Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson), but also Goodfellas, in which Ray Liotta and Robert DeNiro play New York Irish gangsters. And, of course, there is his epic The Irishman.
A Fragile Peace
Rory Duffy’s film about Northern Ireland in the 21st Century continues to wow festival audiences. “A Fragile Peace: Inside Brexit and Belfast” looks at the past several decades in the North, and how the tenuous end of “The Troubles” has been jeopardized by the Brexit movement. While many commentators were screaming about whether or not England would leave the European Union, not many people were paying attention to how this might affect the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic – and the overall process of peace and reconciliation. Duffy’s documentary explores a worst-case scenario in which Brexit not only undermines the Good Friday Agreement but reignites the violent Troubles.
“It won best feature documentary at Crown Points International Film Festival and Austin International Festival and Best Film Essay at Area51 Film Festival,” Duffy recently noted. A Fragile Peace was also nominated for best documentary director at Area51, and best documentary feature at Big Apple Film Festival New York, Area51, Hawaii International Film Festival, Doc Only Copenhagen, and Liverpool Indie Awards.
“It’s been an incredible journey so far,” said Duffy, who continues to shop A Fragile Peace to various streaming services. “There’s a lot of interest in Northern Irish stories from Say Nothing on Hulu to Derry Girls, both of which have done really well here in the States.”
Big, Bold, Beautiful Colin
Colin Farrell transformed himself with prosthetics and a “Noo Yawk” accent to earn an Emmy nomination in the HBO crime show The Penguin, also starring Irish American stage and screen veteran Deirdre O’Connell.
Farrell is now back to flaunting his leading-man looks with two movies this fall. The first was opposite Margot Robbie in the sci-fi romance A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, in which Farrell plays an Irish immigrant looking for love.
What he gets, instead, is a very unusual car rental, in this Twilight Zone-ish story, that also stars Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Next up for Farrell – first in theaters, before moving to Netflix at the end of October – is The Ballad of a Small Player, also starring Tilda Swinton, and based on a novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne. This movie also has a vaguely supernatural element to it, with Farrell playing a down-and-out gambler and alcoholic who is given what seems to be a very generous offer – until it becomes clear that there might be serious consequences if he does not hold up his end of the bargain.
Hitting the Road with Murray, Conan
Talk about nice work if you can get it.
Irish American funnymen Conan O’Brien and Bill Murray are both hitting the road these days, while offering up their decidedly comic takes on world travel.
Murray’s latest project is called Off Course, and follows the 75-year-old actor – best known for classics from Ghostbusters to Scrooged – as he travels around the island of Ireland playing golf with pals.
“I started out caddying, and golf was the best education I ever received,” Murray was quoted as saying in the Irish Times. “Ireland feels like the right place to put all that to work.”
Off Course was inspired by Tom Coyne’s bestselling book, A Course Called Ireland. Coyne will even join Murray on the TV show, along with celebrity friends, in the six-part series that will be set in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, and is being produced by the BBC.
“This is a series full of humor, heart and adventure, set against some of the most beautiful backdrops imaginable – and we can’t wait for audiences to come along for the ride with Bill,” BBC executive Catherine Catton said.
Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien – seen recently alongside Rose Byrne in the dark comedy movie If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – just wrapped up the second season of his own travel show.
Conan O’Brien Must Go had humble beginnings as a pandemic podcast. But it has since taken O’Brien from Ireland and Argentina to Thailand and Norway.
In the most recent season, O’Brien’s show – seen on HBO Max – stopped at Spain, New Zealand and Austria.
Not surprisingly, O’Brien’s trip to Ireland, during the show’s first season, was particularly memorable to many viewers – including Emmy Award voters. That episode won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Nonfiction Program. O’Brien’s show won in the same category again at this year’s Emmys, for a trip to Austria.
Earlier this year, HBO announced that O’Brien’s worldwide journeys would continue for at least another season.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Fall 2025 issue of Irish America. ♦
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