‘Lear Rex’: Rachel Brosnahan, Peter Dinklage, More Join New Adaption!!

Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain‘s King Lear adaptation, Lear Rex, has assembled an all-star cast. Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield, Ariana DeBose, and Rachel Brosnahan are only four of the noted thespians who will play the parts of one of William Shakespeare‘s greatest tragedies. Deadline reports that the film will start production on August 12 in Los Angeles.

In addition to Pacino, who will play Lear, and Chastain, who will play Goneril, the film will also feature DeBose (West Side Story) as Cordelia, Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Regan, Dinklage (Game of Thrones) as the Fool, Danny Huston (Wonder Woman) as Albany, Chris Messina (The Mindy Project) as Cornwall, Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah) as Edmund, Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs) as Kent, Matthew Jacobs (Boxing Day) as Gloucester, Rhys Coiro (Entourage) as Oswald, and Stephen Dorff (True Detective) as Poor Tom. Bernard Rose (Candyman), who will write and direct Lear Rex, had this to say about the cast’s new additions courtesy of producer Barry Navidi and casting director Sharon Howard-Field: “It is enormously exciting to get the opportunity to work with this extraordinary cast that Al, Barry, and Sharon have put together to tackle this radical, but accessible adaptation of Shakespeare’s greatest play.”

What Is ‘King Lear’ About?

First performed in 1606, King Lear centers around the titular monarch. The aging king wishes to divide his kingdom between his three daughters; while Regan and Goneril agree and lavish him with praise, the third, Cordelia, refuses and is disowned. Lear eventually realizes that the praise offered to him by Regan and Goneril was insincere, and that only Cordelia truly loved him – but by then it is too late, and he becomes a madman wandering the wilderness as courtly intrigues destroy his former kingdom. Lear is considered one of the great Shakespearean lead roles, and the play has been adapted many times for the screen, with actors as diverse as Orson Welles, Ian McKellen, Brian Blessed, Paul Scofield, Anthony Hopkins, and even novelist Norman Mailer taking on the role of the mad king. Akira Kurosawa‘s 1985 epic Ran transported the play to feudal Japan, in a film that is now considered one of Kurosawa’s masterpieces. 1997’s A Thousand Acres, an adaptation of Jane Smiley‘s novel of the same name, reexamined the play from a contemporary feminist perspective, and starred Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Pacino is no stranger to Shakespeare on stage and screen. On stage, he appeared in productions of Richard III and Julius Caesar, and starred as Shylock in Michael Radford‘s 2004 adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. He made his directorial debut with 1996’s Looking for Richard, which combined a performance of Richard III with a behind-the-scenes narrative of its production. Francis Ford Coppola also added elements of Lear into The Godfather, Part III, which starred Pacino.