Adele will make her film debut in Tom Ford‘s film adaptation of Anne Rice‘s Cry to Heaven. The Cry to Heaven cast also includes Colin Firth, Nicholas Hoult, Hunter Schafer, Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Adolescence‘s Owen Cooper, and more.
Ford wrote the Cry to Heaven script and will direct the film, Deadline reports, marking his first movie since 2016’s Nocturnal Animals. The former creative director of Gucci and YSL is producing the film through his Fade to Black production company.
Cry to Heaven is Ford’s third movie. Here’s everything we know about the film so far.
Who’s in Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven cast?
Cry to Heaven stars Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Adele, Ciarán Hinds, George MacKay, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Paul Bettany, Owen Cooper, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Hunter Schafer, Josephine Thiesen, Thandiwe Newton, Theodore Pellerin, Daryl McCormack, Cassian Bilton, Hauk Hannemann, and Lux Pascal (Pedro Pascal‘s sister).
Firth starred in Ford’s 2009 directorial debut, A Single Man, which was nominated for an Oscar, won a BAFTA, and won AFI Film of the Year and GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film. Taylor-Johnson starred in Nocturnal Animals, which won the 2016 Grand Jury prize at the Venice Film Festival, earned Michael Shannon an Oscar nomination, and was nominated for nine BAFTAs and three Golden Globes.
What is Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven about?
Cry to Heaven is a historical novel set in 18th-century Italy. It follows the stories of two men castrated to ensure their perfect soprano voices: Guido Maffeo, a Calabrian boy who is castrated at age 6 and enters a conservatory, and Tonio Treshi, the son of Venetian nobility.
Guido becomes an opera star, but he becomes a teacher after he loses his voice. Guido searches for a boy who can carry out his lost dream. This takes him to Venice, where he meets Tonio, who dreams of being a singer. Tonio’s family disapproves of his dream. Here’s the description from Rice’s website:
“Tonio’s family is complicated, his mother a dark alcoholic who tips between lunacy and stupor, his brother (Carlo) reportedly disowned for seducing a common girl. But Tonio discovers the truth about his brother’s sin and turns to his music to hide his fear and confusion. Tonio half-chooses and is half-forced into castration and begins a lifelong plot to take revenge on Carlo. He realizes at Guido’s conservatory what has happened to him and refuses to sing. Guido is tormented by Tonio withholding his voice, but Tonio leaves the conservatory anyway.
“Yet Tonio finds that he now has no place to belong and that his power is building. He returns and begins to sing. His two sides, dark revenge and heroic song, battle for control. Tonio begins his journey of stardom and decadence, achieving no balance in his life. His sexuality proves to be a source of great complexity, confusion, and promise. The minute Tonio has sorted out his life and is finally happy, he hears his mother has died, and his time has come to confront Carlo.”
Is Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven connected to Interview With the Vampire?
Cry to Heaven is not narratively connected to Interview With the Vampire or The Vampire Chronicles series at large. It’s a standalone novel that was published in September 1982, a few years before The Vampire Lestat (AMC’s adaptation of that book, aka Interview‘s third season, comes out in 2026). But the cast does feature Newton, who was in the 1994 Interview With the Vampire film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (she played Yvette).
Cry to Heaven was Rice’s third published book. The first was Interview With the Vampire (1976) and the second was The Feast of All Saints (1979).
Is Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven filming?
Cry to Heaven is reportedly in pre-production in London and Rome and will start filming in mid-January 2026.
When does Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven come out?
Cry to Heaven is anticipated to come out in the fall of 2026. Ford is self-financing the film instead of working with a studio and will take it out to market after production wraps.
Cry to Heaven, Fall 2026
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
