Andrew Scott's 'Elsinore' Premieres at Telluride — SkimNews
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- "Elsinore" had its world premiere Friday at the Telluride Film Festival, directed by Simon Stone from Stephen Beresford's screenplay, dramatizing the final chapter of Scottish actor Ian Charleson as he rehearses and performs Hamlet at London's National Theatre while dying of AIDS.
- Andrew Scott stars as Charleson in what the review calls "a performance for the ages," supported by Olivia Colman as his AIDS-treating physician Dr. Margaret Johnson, Billie Piper as confidante Patsy Pollock, Peter Mullan as his father, Johnny Flynn as National Theatre director Richard Eyre, and David Dawson as filmmaker Derek Jarman.
- Ian Charleson co-starred in the consecutive Best Picture winners "Chariots of Fire" (1981) and "Gandhi" (1982) before returning to the London stage, where he stepped into Hamlet after Daniel Day-Lewis walked off mid-production and completed 24 performances while undergoing chemotherapy, dying at age 40 seven weeks after the run ended.
- Focus Features will distribute the 1-hour-51-minute film, produced by Lucky Red (Andrea Occhipinti), Magnolia Mae Films (Gabrielle Tana, Carolyn Marks Blackwood), and LD Entertainment (Mickey Liddell, Pete Shilaimon), with Scott himself among the producers.
- Telluride's same-weekend lineup also includes "Into the Breach," a Kenneth Branagh-co-produced documentary on the National Theatre's history featuring interviews with Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins, Joan Plowright, Eddie Redmayne, and Gary Oldman, framing the two films as a paired tribute to the institution.
Why it matters: Andrew Scott delivers his second real-life biopic turn of the year after "Pressure," handing Focus Features a clear awards-season vehicle built almost entirely around his lead performance. The coordinated Telluride bow with National Theatre documentary "Into the Breach" gives distributor Focus Features a built-in institutional hook — but IndieWire's headline flags "AIDS-Movie Awards Bait Clichés" as the central risk the Deadline rave declines to interrogate.
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