After his Emmy-winning role in The Night Of and a spot in Rogue One: A Star Wars story, Riz Ahmed will play one of theatre’s greatest characters: Hamlet. He’s developing a version of the Shakespeare classic with his buddy Mike Lesslie (Macbeth, Assassins Creed).
As Deadline reports, this version is “set in a modern-day London of economic and political uncertainty, the story follows the intersecting themes of familial honour, moral duty and dynastic corruption.”
This announcement comes as Netflix reveals plans to boost its original film production. In 2018, Netflix will release 80 original movies, “which range anywhere from the million-dollar Sundance hit, all the way up to something on a much larger scale,” according to chief content officer Ted Sarandos.
These include Bright—the Will Smith cop thriller that cost a reported $90 million—and the upcoming Martin Scorsese gangster movie The Irishman, which had a budget of more than $100 million.
