Coinciding with its announcement that it will premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Netflix has unveiled the first image of Timothee Chalemet (Call Me By Your Name) in director David Michod’s Shakespeare adaptation The King.
“Before Joel Edgerton and I embarked on a retelling of the story of Henry V, I never thought I’d find myself one day making a medieval movie,” said Michod. “Swords and horses were never my thing. But the more we talked and the deeper I researched, the more excited I was by the idea of rendering the Middle Ages – its dirt, its brutality, its precariousness of life and death, its sheer other-worldliness – in a way that felt raw and human. I wanted the kind of medieval movie I might make – one devoid of the nationalist bombast normally associated with the story of Henry V and one that might illuminate the ways in which war can emerge from the swamp of power and paranoia, greed and hubris, fear and family.”
Hal (Timothée Chalamet), wayward prince and reluctant heir to the English throne, has turned his back on royal life and is living among the people. But when his tyrannical father dies, Hal is crowned King Henry V and is forced to embrace the life he had previously tried to escape. Now the young king must navigate the palace politics, chaos and war his father left behind, and the emotional strings of his past life — including his relationship with his closest friend and mentor, the ageing alcoholic knight, John Falstaff (Joel Edgerton).
Also featuring in the cast of The King are Robert Pattinson (Good Time) as The Duaphin, Ben Mendelsohn (Ready Player One) as King Henry IV, Lily-Rose Depp (Yoga Hosers) as Princess Catherine, Sean Harris (Macbeth) as William, Tom Glynn-Carney (Dunkirk) as Hotspur, Dean-Charles Chapman (Game of Thrones) as Thomas and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace) as Philippa.
