Roland Emmerich has been taking a break from blowing up the planet lately, and the poster for his Shakespearean mystery Anonymous has just arrived online.
The tale of Elizabethan intrigue raises the perennial thorny conspiracy theory of who really wrote the plays of William Shakespeare. Hence the quill-ink-spattered poster's trumpeting tagline, "Was Shakespeare a fraud?" and the central figure with his back to camera. It looks like Will, but it's actually Rhys Ifans' Edward De Vere, The Earl of Oxford, proposed in a 1920 study as the real bard.
"I'm the leading man," Ifans told Empire recently. "It makes me laugh just saying that." The film, he promises, "isn't Emmerich-esque at all. He's great at those huge scenes and big showbiz shots, but he's meticulous emotionally as well. He's brilliant with actors. He's like the fucking Horse Whisperer."
Anonymous co-stars Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower and Derek Jacobi, and it's out in the UK on September 30.
"Working with a cast like that isn't intimidating," beams Ifans. "It's joyous. It's luxury beyond words. I've seen bits of it and it looks mind-bogglingly good!"