Elsinore is based on a true story that starts when Daniel Day-Lewis walked off Hamlet mid-run

Elsinore is directed by Simon Stone from a script by Stephen Beresford, the writer of Pride. Scott, who also produced, plays Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor best known as the runner Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire. Olivia Colman plays his doctor, and the ensemble includes Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Mullan. The film premiered at Telluride, went to TIFF, opened the 70th BFI London Film Festival, and hits US theaters on November 20, 2026. UK audiences get it on January 29, 2027.

The title is the name of Hamlet's castle. The story is about the man who got to play him at the very end.

The night Day-Lewis left

In 1989, Richard Eyre staged Hamlet at the National Theatre in London, with Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role and Judi Dench as Gertrude. Day-Lewis was the obvious star: he had just won acclaim for My Left Foot, and his Oscar for it was months away.

In September, during a performance, he reached the scene where Hamlet meets his father's ghost, broke down sobbing, and left the stage. He never went back. The official explanation was exhaustion. The press preferred another one: Day-Lewis's own father, the poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, had died in 1972.

Years later, Day-Lewis described it as a metaphor rather than a hallucination.

"To some extent I probably saw my father's ghost every night."

That night's show still had to finish. Jeremy Northam, who was playing Laertes and understudying Hamlet, went on in the middle of the performance. He had last rehearsed the role about three weeks earlier. He kept playing it while the National looked for a permanent replacement.

Why Ian Charleson said yes

Eyre's choice was Charleson, who had first played Hamlet in 1974, at 25. Eyre had misgivings, and they were about health: Charleson had been diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and was already seriously ill.

That decision is the heart of Elsinore. In the film, Colman's doctor begs him not to take the part. He takes it anyway, knowing what the longest role in Shakespeare will cost him.

Charleson's run began on October 9, 1989. Septicemia had left his face badly swollen, and the public was told he was recovering from a sinus operation. The Financial Times review opened with a warning.

"Mr Charleson's admirers must be warned that he is at first unrecognisable."

Once critics got past the face, they got to the performance. John Peter of The Sunday Times hailed "the masterful new Hamlet: Ian Charleson," and later named him the best actor of 1989.

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The perfect Hamlet

Charleson played his last performance on November 13, 1989. The next day, Ian McKellen accepted the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor and told the room he had seen "the perfect Hamlet." McKellen thought the award belonged to Charleson, and gave him his statuette.

Charleson died on January 6, 1990, at 40, eight weeks after his final show. He had asked that his cause of death be announced as AIDS, which made him one of the first British stars publicly linked to the disease. The National's own archive calls the production "the story of three Hamlets."

No footage of Charleson's Hamlet exists, which left Scott to build the performance from scratch. He had played the role himself, at the Almeida in 2017, and knew exactly what Charleson signed up for, as he told TheWrap.

"That part really does nearly kill you."

Having done it once helped less than you'd think. "I learned about maybe two-thirds of the part all over again," Scott said.

For the record: Day-Lewis hasn't been on a stage since that night in 1989. When he and Dench were reunited on the 2009 musical Nine, he sent her a note: "I promise not to run out on you this time."

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