Mark Rylance's next epic historical drama after Wolf Hall with Happy Valley and Rivals stars

Yahoo

06-03-2025

We're still not over the BBC's smash-hit period drama Wolf Hall, which came to an end after six gripping episodes at the end of last year. Thankfully, it won't be too long before its star Mark Rylance is back on our screens in another historical epic, which has been years in the making and boasts a star-studded cast.
Intrigued? Keep reading for all we know…
Mark is starring alongside the likes of Matthias Schoenaerts (The Danish Girl), Ben Kingsley (Shutter Island), Aidan Turner (Rivals), Con O'Neill (Happy Valley) and Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid's Tale) in The Way of the Wind, an upcoming biblical epic about the life of Christ.
The film, which is expected to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this year, has been in the works for a good while. Shooting began in Italy in 2019, which was followed by five years of editing.
Douglas Booth, Tawfeek Barhom, Martin McCann, Ori Pfeffer, Shadi Mar'i, Makram Khoury, Numan Acar, Emilio De Marchi, Bjorn Thors, Alfonso Postiglione and Lorenzo Gioielli also star in the film.
Géza Röhrig (Resistance) leads the cast as Jesus Christ while Matthias portrays Apostle Peter. The film, which was previously titled The Last Planet, is directed by Terrence Malick and tells the story of Christ's life through a series of parables.
Mark, who plays Satan in the film, told The Guardian in 2019: "Terry wrote four versions of the character of Satan and I thought I would play only one. But I heard I was going to play all four. One of them must have been a woman at some point, but it was when he asked me to grow a beard that I realised I wasn't going to do it that way."
The actor continued: "I'm very happy to act for Terrence Malick, but I'm intrigued, because I hear he talks to you all the time. And coming from the theatre, I'm not used to the director yelling at me while I act or tell me what to do. But his films always intrigued me."
French actor, Mathieu Kassovitz, who features in the film, reportedly revealed on a French radio station that Malick filmed an average of five hours per day and wracked up 3,000 hours of footage by the end of filming.
The film's release will come just months after Mark took his final turn as Thomas Cromwell in the BBC historical drama Wolf Hall, which returned to screens after almost ten years with a second season in November 2024. It also comes after the death of Mark's wife, theatre director and composer Claire van Kampen, who died aged 71 in January.
The Way of the Wind is scheduled to premiere at Cannes Film Festival in 2025.