Chloé Zhao's Hamnet Gets Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – Does Everyone Love It As Much As Critics?

Audiences have now responded to Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, which has been garnering stellar critical reviews for months. Based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell (who co-wrote the screenplay), Hamnet is a fictionalization of the lives of William Shakespeare and his family, focusing on the aftermath of the death of their son and Will penning the play Hamlet.

Hamnet stars Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Will, depicting the couple’s courtship, the births of their three children, Hamnet’s death, and culminating in Agnes attending Hamlet at the Globe Theatre. Director Chloé Zhao is a Best Director Oscar winner for Nomadland, 2020’s Best Picture winner. This is her first feature film since 2021’s Eternals.

Hamnet debuted with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score (which has since dropped to an 88%), but overall, it is evidently being lauded as one of the best movies of the year. Now, with Hamnet being in select theaters and getting its wide release on December 5, audiences have weighed in. Hamnet currently has a 91% Popcornmeter score, per Rotten Tomatoes.

As Hamnet won the top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival, it is not only an essentially guaranteed 2026 Best Picture nominee but a frontrunner to win the whole thing. But it is not unheard of for critical darling movies to not resonate as well with audiences, and Hamnet might have run into this problem with its slower pace and melancholic tone.

However, the novel Hamnet was a hit before the movie adaptation, which moviegoers are taking to as well. The near-universal story of love and loss, combined with the supposed origins of a play most people have heard of, which carries a great mythos, is an overall intriguing concept. Already popular actors, Buckley and Mescal are doing some of their best work yet.

Buckley, in particular, is the one to beat in the 2026 Best Lead Actress race at the Academy Awards. Then the craft and technical side of Hamnet is demonstrative of top-notch filmmaking, which audiences will recognize even if they are not experts in these elements. So, it makes sense that Hamnet is both a critical and audience success.

With only a limited release so far, Hamnet hasn’t made a dent at the box office, but commercial success and widespread support will further help it heading into awards season. Whether it will actually win Best Picture is now in question thanks to One Battle After Another, but it is still clear that Hamnet is a movie that will be remembered for a long time.