Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth has long been characterized as a strong and powerful yet manipulative woman. Now her namesake is being used as the title for a film that’s set a couple hundred years later, but seems no less thrilling.
Written by Alice Birch, based on the novel by Nikolai Leskov, “Lady Macbeth” looks like a sexy period piece that’s sure to launch its star, Florence Pugh, into the limelight.
It’s rural England in 1865, the film’s official synopsis reads, and “Katherine (Pugh) is stifled by her loveless marriage to a bitter man twice her age, and his cold, unforgiving family. When she embarks on a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, a force is unleashed inside her so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.”
Birch is an award-winning playwright whose works include “Revolt,” “Ophelia’s Zimmer,” “We Want You To Watch,” “So Much Once,” and “Open Court Soap Opera.” “Lady Macbeth” is her feature film screenwriting debut. Up next, she’s writing the television adaptation of Mary Gabriel’s 2011 bestseller “Love and Capital.”
“Lady Macbeth” played at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and will screen at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. It hits theaters in LA and NY June 2 , 2017. Until then, check out the scandal-filled trailer below.
