Back To The Bard: Al Pacino, Jessica Chastain To Star In ‘Lear Rex,’ New Shakespeare Adaptation Written & Directed By Bernard Rose

EXCLUSIVE: William Shakespeare is headed back to the big screen again. Bernard Rose (Immortal Beloved) is writing to direct Lear, Rex…, a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Al Pacino will star as the title character, and Jessica Chastain will star as Goneril. Other cast to follow soon.

The film is produced by Barry Navidi, and will be 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.

Chastain starred in the stage play Salome alongside Pacino, and that led to her first film appearance in Wilde Salome directed by Pacino. She’s been thrice-Oscar nominated and won for The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

In Lear Rex, an aging King divides his land between his three daughters to prevent future strife. But he rejects the young daughter who loves him and places his trust in her malevolent sisters, who strip him of his power and condemn him to a wretched wasteland of horror and insanity.

“This project has been Al’s labor of love for over a decade,” Navidi told Deadline. “I am overjoyed to bring this amazing venture to the screen with Bernard Rose’s brilliant adaptation and bold unique vision. I am so excited to team up again with Jess since Pacino’s Wilde Salome.”

Said Rose: “Al and I are going to make a bold, cinematic Lear that will be as accessible moving and powerful as the play was for its original audiences. I am thrilled to have Jessica Chastain join us on this journey.”

The devotion myself and everyone I know have for The Godfather, Heat and many of his other films, Pacino puts into Shakespeare. He believes those masterworks should be ‘tried more often’ in film’, in order to ‘take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.’”

Pacino made his Broadway debut in Does the Tiger Wear Necktie? In 1969 and won a Tony Award for his performance. He won his second Tony for his role in the 1977 revival of The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. He was also Tony-nominated 2010 staging of The Merchant of Venice.

The film aims for a late summer start in Los Angeles.

Pacino is repped by CAA and Hansen Jacobson; Chastain is CAA, Mosaic and Hansen Jacobson; and Rose by John Burnham and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.