Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone and starring LGBTQ+ icon Andrew Scott, delves into the story of gay actor Ian Charleson, who played Hamlet at the National Theatre in London while battling AIDS in the 1980s. The cast also includes Olivia Coleman, Johnny Flynn and Joe Locke, among others.
The biopic drama is set to release in US cinemas in November, with the first trailer being recently on Monday, September 28. The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, where Andrew Scott gave a speech praising Charleson’s resilience.
He shared, “I never had the fortune to meet Ian, but I got to get to know the people who loved him so much and who he loved, and I know that he had the courage of a 100 men and he was a man of enormous integrity, huge talent and enormous fun.”
Furthermore, Scott won the International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and screenwriter Stephen Beresford won the Screenwriter Award at the Montclair Film Festival.
The trailer depicts Charleson wanting to escape being known for playing Eric Liddell in the Oscar-winning 1981 film, Chariots of Fire. It’s then that he goes for the titular role in the National Theatre of London’s production of Hamlet.
However, he is soon diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and decides to spend his remaining time committed to performing. The film promises to be a powerful and poignant exploration of what it was to be gay and living with HIV/AIDS at the height of the epidemic. First reactions described it as “deeply moving”, “heartbreaking” and “deeply tragic but equally funny”.
View this post on Instagram
Andrew Scott has his own experience of playing Hamlet on stage at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre in 2017, for which he won the Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Shakespearean Performance. During the Telluride Film Festival Q&A, he commented: “I played Hamlet myself; I played it 150 times… You do it eight times a week, it’s four hours long… It’s 1,500 lines long, and you have to encompass every human part.”
He continued, “To be able to do that is such an enormous Olympian feat and it’s incredibly physical and the idea that he did that when he was so ill is just an incredible feat.”
View this post on Instagram
Check out the trailer for Elsinore starring Andrew Scott below!
© 2026 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
Support GCN
GCN is a free, vital resource for Ireland’s LGBTQ+ community since 1988.
GCN is a trading name of National LGBT Federation CLG, a registered charity - Charity Number: 20034580.
GCN relies on the generous support of the community and allies to sustain the crucial work that we do. Producing GCN is costly, and, in an industry which has been hugely impacted by rising costs, we need your support to help sustain and grow this vital resource.
Supporting GCN for as little as €1.99 per month will help us continue our work as Ireland’s free, independent LGBTQ+ media.