How the Box Office Success of ‘Hamnet’ Sparked Sales of the Novel

In 2019, Maggie O’Farrell’s agent sent emailed a group of producers and filmmakers to share a manuscript of the author’s upcoming book. “Hamnet,” as the novel was titled, centered around William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, following the couple as they grapple with the sudden death of their 11-year-old son. Liza Marshall, a U.K. based producer, read it in a single sitting.

“It was such an extraordinarily moving book,” Marshall says. “I had a profound reaction to it. There was an intimacy to it, and it was incredibly tragic, but also cinematic. Ultimately, it’s about the healing power of storytelling.”

Most of the people O’Farrell’s agent contacted passed on the project, but Marshall jumped at the chance to make her pitch. She connected with O’Farrell, who was at home in Edinburgh, over Zoom, and the two hit it off.

“She’s a very generous person who realized, as she puts it, that the book is her baby and the film is like her nephew,” Marshall says. “She always knew it would be a different thing, and it was never going to be a replica of the book. It was always an adaptation.”

So Marshall snapped up the rights before the novel hit shelves, which turned out to be a smart business decision. When “Hamnet” was published in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, its story of love and loss resonated with people whose lives had been upended. The film adaptation was soon set up at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin, which brought in Focus Features thanks to a production deal that the companies maintain. The partners then enlisted Chloé Zhao, the Oscar-winning director behind “Nomadland,” to find a way to make a domestic tragedy set in Elizabethan England compelling for modern audiences.

“We had confidence in Chloé,” says Kiska Hughes, Focus’ president of production and acquisitions. “She’s entrancing. And she’d gotten all this acclaim and attention for her work. She said that…