Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013).
For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.
EXCLUSIVE: After dominating the Oscars in 2021, Nomadland writer-director Chloé Zhao looks to be building out her future slate.
Sources tell Deadline that she is set to direct an adaptation of Hamnet for Amblin Partners, Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions and Book of Shadows.
The film is based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, who will adapt the script with Zhao. The New York Times bestselling historical fiction novel imagines the story of Agnes – the wife of the world’s most famous writer, William Shakespeare – as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her only son, Hamnet.
The novel charts the emotional, familial and artistic consequences of that loss, bringing to life a human and heart-stopping story as the backdrop to the creation of Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet. RELATED: Maggie O’Farrell Novel ‘Hamnet’ Headed For Screen From Amblin Partners, Sam Mendes’ Neal Street, Hera Pictures Hamnet won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Fiction Prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards, and was also shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
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