Earlier this year, Andrew Scott starred in Pressure, which chronicled one of Britain’s finest hours of the 20th century. This fall, he’ll star in Elsinore, a drama about one of its greatest shames: an unchecked pandemic that cut down many of its best and brightest in the prime of their lives. Elsinore will hit theaters this fall, but we now have a first glimpse of it with the release of its first trailer. The film is based on the true story of Ian Charleson, a Scottish actor famed worldwide for his silver screen performances in Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, he was also a noted stage star in the UK.
In the 1980s, Charleson was diagnosed with AIDS, which was essentially a death sentence at the time. Despite being severely ill, he took on the lead role in a production of Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989. Charleson’s performance, which was universally acclaimed, would turn out to be his swan song, as he succumbed to the disease months later. He insisted that his cause of death be announced publicly, a rarity at the time; it helped foster greater awareness of the threat posed by AIDS, which was then poorly understood.
Elsinore centers around the last months of Charleson’s life, as he braves his illness while treading the boards one last time. Helping him is Margaret Johnson (Olivia Colman), one of the UK’s first doctors to specialize in AIDS; by his side is his friend, casting director Patsy Pollock (Billie Piper), who sees him through his final days. But it’s Charleson who musters the strength to deliver the performance of a lifetime. The film is directed by Simon Stone (The Woman in Cabin 10), from a script by Stephen Beresford (Tolkien); it will be released by Focus Features on November 20.
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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
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🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
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The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
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Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
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Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
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Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
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No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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What Are the Critics Saying About ‘Elsinore’?
Elsinore currently holds an 89% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Scott and Colman’s performances being singled out for praise. In her review, Collider’s Terese Lacson was moved by Scott’s bravura performance, which is already being brought up in the end-of-year awards conversation; according to Lacson, he gives “an authentic and gut-wrenching performance that stays with you long after the movie is over.”
Elsinore will debut in theaters on November 20. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
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Release Date
November 20, 2026
Runtime
104 minutes
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Director
Simon Stone
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Writers
Stephen Beresford
Producers
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Andrea Occhipinti, Andrew Scott, Carolyn Marks Blackwood, Gabrielle Tana, Mickey Liddell, Pete Shilaimon, Stefano Massenzi
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