Riz Ahmed gives a fierce, physical turn in Aneil Karia’s London-set adaptation of Hamlet, pairing Shakespearean verse with South Asian family dynamics
The new film version of Hamlet, directed by Aneil Karia and fronted by Riz Ahmed, aims to bring Shakespeare’s tragedy into a contemporary British setting while keeping the play’s core language and emotional stakes intact. Premiering on the festival circuit at Telluride in 2026, and scheduled for a U.S. theatrical release from Vertical on April 10, 2026, this adaptation re-situates the prince within a prosperous London real estate family and grounds the story in the rhythms of the British South Asian community. The result is a film that favors urgency and close subjective access over theatrical distance.
This version deliberately centers Hamlet’s interior life, using cinematic techniques to pull audiences into his perspective. The screenplay by Michael Lesslie trims the play to a lean runtime while preserving crucial speeches and confrontations, and the production casts celebrated actors such as Joe Alwyn, Morfydd Clark, Art Malik, Sheeba Chaddha, and Timothy Spall in supporting roles. The creative team leans on contemporary markers—business disputes, lavish wedding rituals, and cityscapes—to translate courtly intrigue into modern power struggles.
At the heart of the picture is Riz Ahmed, whose interpretation reads as both muscular and unhinged. He approaches Hamlet with a kinetic energy that often feels closer to stage intensity than subtle film naturalism; this choice keeps the character volatile and magnetically present in almost every scene. Ahmed delivers the play’s most famous soliloquy in a startlingly modern context—driving at speed through London—where the well-known lines are reframed as an experience of raw motion. His work anchors the film’s experiment: asking the audience to inhabit a prince who is both corporate heir and grieving son.
The ensemble surrounding Ahmed brings contrasting tones that sharpen the film’s emotional beats. Art Malik plays Claudius as a polished executive figure, while Sheeba Chaddha embodies Gertrude with ceremonial glamour in a sequence that includes an elaborately staged South Asian wedding. Morfydd Clark and Joe Alwyn supply younger perspectives as Ophelia and Laertes, and Timothy Spall appears in the film’s Act 2 confrontation with Hamlet. These performances, by turns restrained and expressive, create a textured environment against which Ahmed’s volatility stands out.
Karia’s directorial approach is practical and focused: he aims to make Shakespeare feel immediate without stripping away its verbal power. The adaptation keeps enough of the original verse to honor the text, while tactical cuts by Lesslie keep the momentum brisk. First-person perspective becomes a guiding principle here, with camera placement and editing choices designed to tether viewers to Hamlet’s experience rather than to an ensemble stage tableau. The modernization trades period pomp for contemporary institutions—real estate, family enterprises, and urban ceremonies—so that betrayals feel like boardroom moves as much as palace intrigue.
Cultural specifics are woven into the production design and soundtrack, with scenes that foreground South Asian ritual and music to locate the narrative within a diasporic British milieu. A wedding sequence functions as both spectacle and narrative pivot, staging public happiness against private collapse. These choices expand the play’s social portrait without altering its essential moral questions about power, grief, and justice. The film also uses modern props and settings—cars, construction sites, corporate offices—to reframe familiar moments, making them resonate for contemporary audiences.
The adaptation’s principal strength is its lead performance: Riz Ahmed invests the role with such intensity that even viewers wary of modernizations will find moments of genuine electricity. Aneil Karia and the creative team deserve credit for translating Shakespeare into a compact cinematic form that is watchable and often urgent. Yet the production does not always add new interpretive layers to the play’s core ideas; beyond the obvious value of casting actors of South Asian descent in these parts, the film sometimes feels more like a well-made re-dressing than a reinterpretation that reshapes the arguments of the original text. Still, for audiences who appreciate a visceral, character-led entry point into Shakespeare, this Hamlet offers an affecting and modern-minded experience.
Overall, the film sits as a worthwhile addition to contemporary adaptations—one that showcases its star and makes a strong case for the relevance of Shakespeare in modern cultural settings, even if it does not fully revolutionize the canon. Grade: B-.