The Veterans Boards Bernard Rose’s ‘Lear Rex’ With Al Pacino, Jessica Chastain Rachel Brosnahan, Ariana DeBose & Peter Dinklage – AFM

EXCLUSIVE: The Veterans has boarded sales for an AFM launch on Bernard Rose’s Shakespeare adaptation Lear Rex, starring Al Pacino as tragic monarch King Lear alongside Jessica Chastain as his villainous, power-hungry, oldest daughter Goneril.

Principal photography is completed on the picture, the all-star cast for which also features Emmy winner Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Lear’s second malevolent daughter Regan; Academy-Award Winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as the king’s beloved youngest daughter Cordelia, who he erroneously banishes; Emmy Winner Peter Dinklage (Game Of Thrones, Cyrano) as the Fool, and Lakeith Stanfield (The Book Of Clarence) as the scheming figure of Edmund.

Further cast members include Ted Levine as Kent, Mathew Jacobs as Gloucester, Danny Huston as Albany, Chris Messina as Cornwall, Stephen Dorff as Poor Tom and Rhys Coiro as Oswald.

Rose, who started out making music videos for iconic pop tunes such as Bronski Beat’s ‘Why’ and ‘Smalltown Boy’ and Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Relax’, has built up a varied filmography over the past 40 years from horrors such as Paperhouse and Candyman to adaptations such as Anna Karenina and Frankenstein to the recent British-Japanese action picture Samurai Marathon.

The production reunites Pacino and Chastain for the first time since the former’s 2011 docudrama Wilde Salomé, with that collaboration sparked by their appearing together in a stage production of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play Salomé.

The film is produced by Barry Navidi and is his fifth collaboration with Pacino after The Merchant of Venice (2004) in which Pacino played Shylock, Wilde Salomé (2011), and Salomé (2013) and recently Modi (2024), which is directed by Johnny Depp.

The official synopsis for Rose’s Lear Rex reads: An aging king decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters to prevent future strife. But after testing their devotion, he banishes the youngest, Cordelia, who truly loves him, placing his trust in her flattering but malevolent sisters, Goneril and Regan, who strip him of his power and condemn him to wander in a wasteland of horror and insanity.