Hamlet Getting A Female-centric Reimagining With Daisy Ridley & Naomi Watts

Hamlet is undoubtedly one of the greatest plays ever written, but as many have noticed, the female characters are somewhat problematic from a modern perspective. That’s now getting addressed on film with a movie adaptation of Lisa Klein’s young adult novel, Ophelia.

The cast is starting to come together, with Daisy Ridley and Naomi Watts in final talks for the movie, which re-imagines the story of Hamlet and takes a look at it through the female character’s eyes. The two main women are Ophelia, a young woman who is the daughter of new King Claudius’s top advisor. She starts to fall for Hamlet, who is consumed with indecision over whether to kill Claudius, who he believes murdered his father.

There’s also Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, who marries Claudius shortly after the death of her husband, resulting in scorn from her son. It eventually all goes very badly, ending in massive tragedy for pretty much everyone (most of whom are dead).

However, Klein’s novel slightly re-imagines things, bringing in new story elements, secret romances and a change to the ending to make it slightly less full of death.