Riz Ahmed casts himself as Hamlet in "contemporary" Netflix adaptation

By Sam Barsanti | October 17, 2017 | 8:24pm

Aux News Film

When your Hollywood career is officially super hot, like if you just appeared in a Star Wars movie and became the first man of Asian descent to ever win an acting Emmy, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Riz Ahmed happens to be in that very specific position, and while he’s still got this heat, he’s apparently going to use it to make a “contemporary adaptation” of Hamlet with himself in the lead. That comes from Deadline, which says Ahmed is currently “sealing a deal with Netflix” to make this happen—and considering that the streaming service just said it wants to dramatically increase its production of original movies, Ahmed’s timing probably couldn’t be better.

This new version of Hamlet was co-developed with writer Mike Lesslie, who Ahmed has known since college, and it’s set in a modern-day London struggling with “economic and political uncertainty.” It will reportedly involve “themes of familiar honor, moral duty, and dynastic corruption,” all of which seem pretty standard for Hamlet.