Superstar recording artist Adele is set to make her film acting debut. The “Hello” and “Rolling in the Deep” singer has only ever acted onscreen in her own music videos and in a cameo as herself in a 2009 episode of Ugly Betty. She is just a Tony away from being an EGOT winner, having won 16 Grammys, an Outstanding Variety Special Emmy for Adele One Night Only, and a Best Original Song Oscar for “Skyfall” from 2013’s Skyfall.
Per Deadline, Adele has been cast in the upcoming movie Cry to Heaven, which is adapted from the Anne Rice novel of the same name. The movie will be the first feature directed by A Single Man‘s Tom Ford since his Golden Globe-winning 2016 feature Nocturnal Animals. Ford also wrote the screenplay and is set to produce via Fade To Black.
Adele will appear opposite a robust, star-studded cast that also includes The King’s Speech‘s Colin Firth, Superman‘s Nicholas Hoult, Belfast‘s Ciarán Hinds, 1917‘s George MacKay, Kingsman‘s Mark Strong, WandaVision‘s Paul Bettany, Euphoria‘s Hunter Schafer, Westworld‘s Thandiwe Newton, and Nocturnal Animals‘ Golden Globe winner Aaron Taylor Johnson.
Nocturnal Animals was nominated for two additional Golden Globes (for Best Director and Best Screenplay) and an Oscar (for Best Supporting Actor for Michael Shannon).
Also joining the cast in unspecified roles are Hauk Hannemann, Daryl McCormack, Josephine Thiesen, Owen Cooper, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Theodore Pellerin, Cassian Bilton, and Lux Pascal, who is the younger sister of The Mandalorian and The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal.
Cry to Heaven is expected to begin production in mid-January, in time for a planned release in late fall, 2026. Ford is planning to self-finance the movie, which is set in Italy in the 1700s and follows the friendship between the scion of a noble family and a castrato singer as they traverse the dramatic and seductive world of opera.
Although Cry to Heaven does not have supernatural elements, it does arrive during a peak period for Anne Rice adaptations. Her work has been adapted into a popular television franchise known as the Immortal Universe on AMC. So far, this includes the 2022 series Interview with the Vampire and its spinoffs, 2023’s Mayfair Witches and 2025’s The Talamasca.
While Adele‘s character in Cry to Heaven is unknown, her presence in the movie does not mark the first time that Tom Ford has featured an inexperienced actor in a major role. The fashion designer and filmmaker previously cast model Jon Kortajarena opposite Colin Firth in 2009’s A Single Man, which was nominated for an Oscar.