Columbia Pictures (via our friends at FirstShowing) have released the first image from their new movie, Anonymous which gives us our first looks at Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere. Anonymous is helmed by CGI disaster movie legend, Roland Emmerich and this time it would appear that he’s taken to period dramas?! The man famed for directing movies like Independence Day, Star Gate, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 has gone all old school on us but it’s surely going to contain mountain loads of computer processing power somewhere isn’t it?!

Synopsis: Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, Anonymous speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds ranging from Mark Twain and Charles Dickens to Henry James and Sigmund Freud, namely: who was the author of the plays credited to William Shakespeare? Experts have debated, books have been written, and scholars have devoted their lives to protecting or debunking theories surrounding the authorship of the most renowned works in English literature. Anonymous poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when cloak-and-dagger political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles hungry for the power of the throne were exposed in the most unlikely of places: the London stage.

Anonymous also stars Xavier Samuel, Jamie Campbell Bower, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, Rafe Spall, Edward Hogg and is set for release 30th September in the US and we assume around then too in the UK.

Click the image to enlarge.