You could be forgiven in thinking, with a title such as Lady Macbeth, we are about to get yet another film adaptation based on Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth and in particular his wife. Most recently the play adapted for the big screen in 2015 with Michael Fassbender playing Macbeth and Marion Cotillard as his long-suffering wife Lady Macbeth. From the recently released trailer of this new film from director William Oldroyd, it has the same brooding tone but that’s where the similarities end.
Related: Lady Macbeth LFF Premiere Interviews
This story of Lady Macbeth is an adaptation loosely based on the nineteenth century novella called Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov, with the title role played by the rising talent of Florence Pugh, who won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Breakthrough of the Year for this role.
In this film she stars alongside Cosmo Jarvis (Spooks: The Greater Good) with a supporting cast of Paul Hilton (Wuthering Heights), newcomer Naomi Ackie and Christopher Fairbank (Guardians of the Galaxy).
A number of highly acclaimed critics are already raving over Theatre and first-time feature film director, William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth tragic portrait of a beautiful, determined and merciless young woman seizing her independence in a world dominated by men. So, even though based in the early 19th century, has a familiar connection to the world we currently live in.
The trailer is full of cold dark intrigue and sexual tension as Lady Macbeth’s world starts to reveal itself over the course of its two minutes setting the tone of what we can expect.
Lady Macbeth is in cinemas April 28.
Lady Macbeth Official Synopsis
Rural England, 1865. Katherine (Florence Pugh) is stifled by her loveless marriage to a bitter man twice her age, and his cold, unforgiving family. When she embarks on a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, a force is unleashed inside her so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
