Mamoru Hosoda explains why Hamlet is everywhere this year

Hamlet is having something of a renaissance in 2025. This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival featured three different takes on the idea, including Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of the play’s inspiration and Aneil Karia’s rendition set in modern-day London. But the most out-there version came from Belle director Mamoru Hosoda, who transformed Shakespeare’s revenge story into a fantastical epic called Scarlet, complete with time travel and dragons.

Hosoda likens the confluence to the late 1940s and early ’50s, when acclaimed filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles put out their own takes on Macbeth. “Perhaps there was something happening in a larger social context that made these filmmakers tap into the universal story that Macbeth had,” Hosoda tells me. In the case of Hamlet, he believes that the revenge story feels particularly timely given the ongoing spate of global conflicts over the last few years. “Watching all of this unfold almost made the world feel like this hell-like space,” he says.

That’s part of what inspired the story of Scarlet, in which the titular lead is a princess avenging her father’s death. It’s a quest that leads her to a wasteland known as the “otherworld” that exists somewhere between life and death.

In conversation ahead of the film’s theatrical release — it hits select theaters on December 12th, before a wider release on February 6th — he spoke about getting inspiration from classic literature, the importance of optimism, and leaving the story open to interpretation.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

noti.group: With Belle, I know you had wanted to make a version of Beauty and the Beast for a long time before that film. Was it a similar situation with Hamlet?

Mamoru Hosoda: Shakespeare is something that I recall reading in high school and college, and perhaps someday I thought it would be nice to do something based on classic literature. But I didn’t want to overstep my boundaries in terms of interpreting something that’s been so highly regarded in the literary world. That being said, when I started working on Scarlet, I knew that I wanted to have this revenge story. And then looking at the landscape of what literature really explores the idea of revenge, I think Hamlet is one of the originals. So that’s where the idea of Hamlet came into play.

What was it about that theme of revenge that struck you and made you want to explore it with Scarlet?

I started on this project about four years ago. At that time we had just made it through covid, the world was seemingly moving towards a much more peaceful place, and that’s around the time all of these conflicts started to emerge around the world. Watching all of this unfold almost made the world feel like this hell-like space. I think there is a lot of hatred that you could see. The only answer to that hatred was revenge, and different countries and people taking revenge upon each other. So it became a very common topic, and it’s an issue that we needed to really look into.

So how do you go from that to a story that also takes place in the afterlife and has time travel and dragons in it?

You’re right, in Hamlet there’s no time travel. That being said, his father does appear as a ghost, so in this world ghosts do exist. In the original Hamlet, the father’s ghost comes back to say “you must have revenge.” I thought to myself, Well, what if instead, Hamlet’s father said to forgive? That’s where I started. If I had a daughter, which I do, and I was trying to impart something on her, I wouldn’t want my daughter to give up her entire life in this pursuit of revenge. I would probably tell her to forgive and find a different path forward.

How that unfolds in the context of Scarlet, it puts her on a different course. If Hamlet had faced that same situation, it would’ve opened up more questions than answers, and would’ve put Hamlet through an even greater struggle than what he went through. That’s what I really want to explore. Not just the blood-driven pursuit of revenge, but rather when presented with a different option that’s perhaps a tough pill to swallow, how would the character react?

The ending is much more optimistic than the rest of the movie. Did you find it tough to balance that bloodthirsty revenge story that exists for much of the film with an uplifting end?

I think it’s easy for us as human beings to be consumed by this idea of revenge. It’s very hard to escape once it’s implanted in your mind. Hijiri in this movie offers a different perspective, which is what triggers the change in Scarlet. I think Hijiri shifts Scarlet’s thought process even by a small percentage, and that’s where the unraveling can finally begin.

Perhaps in the context of a movie, it would feel really good: You’re watching this character, they’ve been wronged, they get their revenge, everything is good and done. But if you think of it from a much broader perspective, well, great that character got revenge, but what about those who now feel like they have been wronged? It really just kicks off this cycle. And that’s where you go from revenge story to tragedy.

So in terms of balancing that, it’s really Hijiri tipping the scales towards there being a different outlet for this emotion of revenge, that can be applied to something that’s less destructive.

Your films have explored all kinds of settings across fantasy and sci-fi, even a metaverse. What was it like trying to envision what this afterlife world was going to be like?

I looked at Dante’s Divine Comedy to try and find inspiration. In that story, Dante is alive but travels through the different layers of hell, and in doing so is able to meet all of these famous dead people, irrespective of what era they existed in. I thought about this a lot, and it almost seemed like in going to this different plane Dante was able to time travel. That’s where the idea of this world in Scarlet emerged. That’s how Scarlet is able to interface with Hijiri, to meet someone from a different timeline who will in some way affect her fate. I almost saw this land of the dead as a means of time travel.

I know the otherworld is meant to be an in-between place, so I’m curious why you chose this bleak version of the afterlife from Dante to represent that?

When making this film, I did a lot of location hunting. I traveled to different places in the Middle East, like Jordan and Israel, and countries that believe in a single god. I feel that this act of pilgrimage, or traveling through very harsh conditions to arrive at some kind of salvation, there’s this interesting dynamic where the payoff almost becomes greater because of how harsh the conditions were. Another location that I went to was Death Valley in the United States. Similarly there’s almost this spiritual feeling to the land, which is why it felt appropriate for the film.

One of my personal favorite parts of the movie was the dragon; it’s so imposing and ancient. I was wondering how that came about, and how you wanted to use it to further the story?

There’s really no explanation for the dragon in this film. Why is it flying through this sky ocean? Why is it full of arrows, swords, and any type of weapon you can think of? I think there are a lot of ways to interpret it and that was intentionally left open.

Was that your approach to the film as a whole, leaving things open to interpretation?

I think so. Had this been a limited Netflix series and I had 12 episodes to play with, we could’ve gone into much more detail. But having to think of taking people on a two-hour journey, there isn’t a lot of room to expand on the different areas of the world. I think the key point here is Scarlet’s journey for revenge, and her falling into this world that exists between life and death. As a general rule perhaps, much of the movie was left open to interpretation.