Paul Mescal will star as the young William Shakespeare in a big-screen version of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao.

The film is not related to Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage play, which has played to sold-out runs in Stratford-upon-Avon and the West End; rather it will be scripted by Zhao and O’Farrell.

Mescal will appear alongside Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, called Agnes in the book, which explores the loss of their 11-year-old son to the plague.

Speaking to Vogue to promote his current film, All of Us Strangers, Mescal called the novel “devastating”. “I can’t wait,” he continued. “If I told a younger version of myself that this would be [shooting] this year, I wouldn’t believe it.”

Mescal and Buckley were co-stars in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, but didn’t share screen time. “I think she’s one of our present-day greats,” said Mescal of Buckley.

Buckley is shortly to be seen opposite The Lost Daughter’s Olivia Colman in Wicked Little Letters; both she and Mescal are recent Olivier award winners – Buckley for Cabaret and Mescal for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Zhao won multiple Oscars in 2021 for her third film, Nomadland; her Marvel follow-up, Eternals, was less rapturously received.

“Chloé is somebody I can’t wait to get in the weeds with,” said Mescal, “and get into the heads of those characters.”