Actor Anthony Hopkins to Play Handel in New Biopic

The Academy Award-winning actor will play G.F. Handel in a biopic on the composer’s “Messiah”

Titled The King of Covent Garden the new biopic on the German-born English composer Geroge Frideric Handel will feature the two-time Academy Award winning Anthony Hopkins in the lead role. 

The film will be set during the period in which Handel worked on his choral masterpiece “Messiah.” Helmed by the British film and TV sales and production company Embankment Films, global pre-sales have now launched for the project, which is set to be released in late fall 2025.

Handel’s Messiah was originally an Easter offering, and was first performed in Dublin on April 13, 1742; the audience reached a record of 700 people. Nowadays, the work is a fixture of the Christmas season and has since been celebrated countless times.

The film’s title also speaks to Handel’s relationship with London’s Covent Garden and the many operas and oratorios that he wrote for it. The venue is also home to the Royal Ballet and Opera, which will stage in its new season Handel’s Semele, which saw its Covent Garden premier 280 years ago. 

To be directed by Andrew Levitas (Minimata) from a script by Tim Slover, the film is being pitched as “a powerfully majestic celebration of genius breaking all the rules to create an anthem inspiring the popular imagination of global audiences,” Variety reports.  

Dan Lupovitz and Kevan Van Thompson will produce the film; the acclaimed operatic mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins will join Peter Touche as executive producer. 

Additionally, Jenkins will contribute her musical performance, knowledge, and industry influence to the production and marketing of The King of Covent Garden.

This film also reunites Hopkins with Embankment Films, which backed and sold Florian Zeller’s The Father, for which Hopkins won his second Academy Award in 2021.

“The storytelling is hinged upon an unlikely pair, who meet each other at their lowest points and together create a magnificent never-heard-before ‘sound for the people’: the groundbreaking masterpiece ‘Messiah’, the annual global bestseller for close to 300 years,” Levitas said in Variety. “Tim Slover’s writing is populated by passionate, real-life experience in all its color and dirt, creating a riveting human story with surprising contemporary relevancy, universal human connectivity and spiritual uplift.”

“Hopkins and Handel are maestros of their art and together they create a joyous and uplifting cinematic event,” added Embankment’s co-founder Tim Haslam. “The ‘Hallelujah’ chorus is globally the most performed of choral favorites — perhaps a shared mindset of celebration. It features in a plethora of iconic entertainment, from Baywatch to The Simpsons, from Runaway Bride to Scrooged. 

“In excess of 5 million people have seen a performance of ‘Messiah’ in The Royal Albert Hall alone,” Haslam continued. “Throughout the U.S., there are over 800 performances per year. Handel’s music has been performed at every coronation of a British monarch since King George II.”