I love costume movies, Shakespeare, the Tudors Age, Renaissance England. I liked Shakespeare in Love. Though I'm pretty sure this movie will be quite different from the 1998 Oscar-winning film, I'm looking forward to seeing it. Anonymous is a political thriller which also involves the question of who actually wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. It follows Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), and is set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) and the Essex Rebellion against her.
Director: Roland EmmerichWriter: John Orloff
Stars: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave and David Thewlis
Production Co: Centropolis Entertainment, Relativity Media, Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures
Release Date: 28 October 2011 (USA)
Screenwriter John Orloff had penned the script back in the late 1990s, but it was shelved after "Shakespeare in Love" came out in 1998. It was almost greenlit as "The Soul of the Age" for a 2005 release, with a budget of $30 to $35 million. However, the financing proved to be "a risky undertaking," director Roland Emmerich said.. In October 2009, Emmerich stated, "It's very hard to get a movie like this made, and I want to make it in a certain way" . What does Emmerich mean? And ... what else do we know about this film?
Ronald Emmerich also said :
It’s an historical thriller because it’s about who will succeed Queen Elizabeth and the struggle of the people who want to have a hand in it. It’s the Tudors on one side and the Cecils on the other, and in between the two is the Queen. Through that story we tell how the plays written by the Earl of Oxford ended up labelled William Shakespeare.
and:
For me there was an incredible script that I bought eight years ago. It was initially called Soul of the Age which pretty much is the heart of the movie still. It’s three characters. It’s like Ben Jonson, who was a playwright then. William Shakespeare who was an actor. It’s like the 17th Earl of Oxford who is the true author of all these plays. We see how, through these three people, it happens that all of these plays get credited to Shakespeare. I kind of found it as too much like Amadeus to me.
It was about jealousy, about genius against end, so I proposed to make this a movie about political things, which is about succession. Succession, the monarchy, was absolute monarchy, and the most important political thing was who would be the next King. Then we incorporated that idea into that story line. It has all the elements of a Shakespeare play. It’s about Kings, Queens, and Princes. It’s about illegitimate children, it’s about incest, it’s about all of these elements which Shakespeare plays have. And it’s overall a tragedy. That was the way and I’m really excited to make this movie.
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