Florian Zeller’s follow-up to “The Father,” titled “The Son,” is based on a trilogy of plays he wrote, which also include “The Mother.” Zeller adapted “The Father” as a film in 2020, starring Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Olivia Williams, and Rufus Sewell, to critical acclaim. Hopkins went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 93rd Oscars, infamously not being present to accept the award, stating that he wasn’t expecting to win in an Instagram post he released the day after.
Zeller also won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Father,” and stated in his acceptance speech that Hopkins is “the greatest living actor. Just the idea to work with him was like a dream. I knew that it was not an easy dream to fulfill. Sometimes, we are the one who closes the door on what is possible and what is not possible. With ‘The Father,’ I really wanted not to close that door and to follow my inspiration and my desire and my dream.”
In an interview with The New Yorker, Hopkins said that working with Zeller on “The Father” was easy because “if you follow a superb screenplay, the language is a road map, and so you don’t have to act. I remember the first day with Olivia Colman, our first scene together, she comes into the room and says, ‘What’s going on? What happened?’—about the woman I fired. I say, ‘What do you mean, ‘What happened?’” So those lines, obviously they mean irritation or irascibility. And then you work with someone like Olivia, and it makes it so easy. Acting’s not required.”
Hopkins re-teams with Zeller for “The Son” and joins a star-studded cast featuring Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, and Zen McGrath. Its plot synopsis reads, “A drama that follows a family as it falls apart and tries to come back together again. A couple of years after his parents’ divorce, 17-year-old Nicholas no longer feels he can stay with his mother, Kate. He moves in with his father Peter and Peter’s new partner Beth. Juggling work, his and Beth’s new baby, and the offer of his dream job in Washington, Peter tries to care for Nicholas as he wishes his own father had cared for him. But by reaching for the past to correct its mistakes, he loses sight of how to hold onto the Nicholas in the present.”
Co-written by Zeller and Christopher Hampton, and produced by Iain Canning, Joanna Laurie, Emile Sherman, Christophe Spadone and Zeller, “The Son” is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics and will release in theaters on November 11.