The BBC and Amazon unveiled the first photo from their new adaptation of King Lear yesterday (March 22), showing Sir Anthony Hopkins in the title role.
He’s joined by Lady Macbeth star Florence Pugh, who plays Cordelia, the youngest of Lear’s three children, in what looks like the final scene of Shakespeare‘s tragic play.
First look at @AnthonyHopkins and @Florence_Pugh in @BBCTwo adaptation of #KingLear, directed by Richard Eyre: https://t.co/aAcQ522jXw pic.twitter.com/v3rkLWUCWT
— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) March 22, 2018
Not pictured are Emma Thompson and Emily Watson, who will play Cordelia’s fearsome sisters Goneril and Regan. The adaptation will be a reunion of sorts for Sir Anthony and Emma, who worked together in Howard’s End and Remains of the Day in the early 1990s.
The outrageously good cast also features Game of Thrones‘s Jim Broadbent as Gloucester, Sherlock‘s Andrew Scott as Edgar, and ex-Timelord Christopher Eccleston, who plays slimeball henchman Oswald.
This new feature-length version of the play looks set to be every bit as good as Hollow Crown, the recent series of Shakespeare’s history plays also directed by Bafta-winning director Richard Eyre. Unlike those adaptations, however, King Lear will be set in the fictional present, with Sir Anthony playing a monarch usurped by a totalitarian military dictatorship in England.
King Lear will air this spring on the BBC in the U.K., before becoming available later this year on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.
Do you think Sir Anthony will make a good Lear?