Write a treatment for NETFLIX for "David Cronenberg's HAMLET." Uncle Claudius kills King Hamlet, as in the original, and marries Queen Gertrude. However, we learn that Uncle Claudius is actually Gertrude's brother, not King Hamlet's brother. They have a child, an unfortunate outcome and highly inbred. Hamlet resents duties put upon him as the new older brother (step brother or half brother). Ophelia has another reason to go crazy. Polonius prattles on, unintelligbly, about eugenics. Write a treatment for an outre' Netflix movie.
##
##
Title: David Cronenberg’s Hamlet
Format: Netflix Original Film (1h 58m)
Genre: Body Horror / Gothic Tragedy / Psychological Family Drama
Tagline: “Something is rotten… deep in the genes.”
TREATMENT
Logline:
When Prince Hamlet returns to Elsinore to mourn his father, he discovers a grotesque new order: his mother Gertrude has married her own brother Claudius, a former state geneticist with a dark vision for Denmark’s future.
As Hamlet spirals into rage and hallucination, the family legacy unravels—revealing secrets best left buried, and bodies best left unexamined.
ACT ONE: INHERITANCE OF FLESH
In a Denmark rendered through glistening glass surfaces and medical chrome, young Prince Hamlet arrives home from his biotech studies in Wittenberg to attend the funeral of his father, King Hamlet. But mourning is cut short: the very next week, his mother Gertrude marries Claudius, a former state eugenicist, now King.
Whispers swirl. The tabloids suggest scandal, but Hamlet uncovers something more disturbing: his Uncle Claudius is not the brother of the late king—but Gertrude’s own brother. Their sudden union is not only incestuous but biologically reckless: they have a child, "Amlethus", an eerie, near-mute toddler with unusual physical deformities and uncanny emotional intelligence.
Claudius speaks softly and tenderly, but his eyes are those of a man who has seen the double helix in a dream—and tried to edit it.
ACT TWO: BLOODLINES AND MADNESS
Haunted by dreams of his dead father in a deteriorating hazmat suit, Hamlet’s suspicions grow. He steals into the royal cryogenic lab, discovering King Hamlet’s body—half-decomposed, half-preserved—his brain removed, spliced, and catalogued.
Enter Polonius, court advisor and Gertrude’s long-time genetic confidant. He delivers bizarre monologues about selective breeding, phenotypic purity, and “the tragic destiny of recessive traits.” Nobody understands him anymore—least of all his daughter, Ophelia, who has her own trauma.
Ophelia, already troubled, begins to hallucinate the crying of Amlethus within her own womb. She has never touched Hamlet—but begins to believe she is pregnant. She sees herself as part of an experiment she never agreed to, and her descent into madness becomes one of biological terror: "They’ve put a ghost inside me."
ACT THREE: SCALPELS AND SKULLS
Hamlet stages a performance—“The Mousetrap Genome”—where he shows a holographic reenactment of King Hamlet being injected with prion sequences while unconscious. Claudius flees the scene, confirming his guilt.
Meanwhile, Ophelia submits to a brutal underwater baptism in the palace biopool, drowning herself amid floating embryos.
Laertes returns from a eugenics institute in Geneva. Unlike the hot-headed brother of the original, this Laertes is cold, rational, and believes that Ophelia’s madness was due to inherited susceptibility—"the family line was always doomed." He challenges Hamlet to a duel, staged as a neural-combat simulation. The loser will have their mind overwritten with the winner’s engrams.
FINAL ACT: DEATH AND DUPLICATION
The duel malfunctions. Both Hamlet and Laertes begin to merge. Claudius injects Hamlet with an experimental serum to “stabilize the throne,” but Hamlet turns it on him. Claudius melts, literally—his body sloughing off into puddles of failed experiments and half-formed siblings.
Gertrude, watching the collapse of her bloodline, drinks the wrong vial. Or the right one. Who knows?
Hamlet, bleeding from multiple data-ports and leaking memories not his own, drags himself to the throne. In his arms, the child Amlethus coos. A final voiceover: “This is the shape of memory now. This is Denmark.”
Cut to black. A flickering ultrasound image. Then: silence.
Tone and Style:
A mix of body horror, Shakespearean language with biotech jargon, and clinical dread, David Cronenberg’s Hamlet is a film where the sins of the parents are etched not only into the soul, but encoded in flesh. Cold hallways, warm blood, and a kingdom crumbling under its own internal sequencing errors.
Possible Casting:
-
Hamlet – Timothée Chalamet or Paul Mescal
-
Gertrude – Tilda Swinton
-
Claudius – Mads Mikkelsen
-
Polonius – Willem Dafoe
-
Ophelia – Anya Taylor-Joy
-
Laertes – Barry Keoghan
-
Ghost / King Hamlet – David Cronenberg (cameo)
Why Netflix?
This is Shakespeare as you’ve never seen it: twisted, intellectual, biotech-fatalist. Perfect for Netflix’s dark prestige slot—think “Black Mirror” meets “Possessor” by way of Elsinore. An instantly buzzworthy project for viewers who crave Shakespearean gravitas served with surgical instruments and psychosexual dread.
