Tom Ford Assembles A-Listers For New Film As Adele Makes Her Big-Screen Debut
Tom Ford has assembled a star-packed ensemble for Cry To Heaven, his adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel — and Adele is making her feature film debut. Here’s who’s joining the lineup.
Tom Ford is making another movie, and he just recruited a very unexpected co-star: Adele. Yes, that Adele. It will be her feature film debut, and she’s stepping into a seriously loaded ensemble for Ford’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s 'Cry To Heaven'.
What is 'Cry To Heaven'?
Ford is writing and directing the film version of Rice’s novel, which is set in eighteenth-century Italy and lives in that lush, heightened world of opera, power, and revenge. The story follows two castrated men navigating the cutthroat rise to fame as opera stars — a premise that’s bold even by Rice standards.
identity, betrayal, love, and the pursuit of artistic and personal freedom
That’s the thematic backbone here, and if you’ve seen Ford’s last two films, you know he likes his beauty with a sharp edge.
Who’s in it
- Nicholas Hoult
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson
- Adele (feature film debut)
- 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
- Lux Pascal
Where and when this is happening
The film is in pre-production across London and Rome right now, with cameras set to roll in mid-January. Ford is producing through his Fade To Black banner. The plan is to release it in fall 2026, which tells you they’re treating this like a major, prestige play.
Why Ford doing this matters
Quick refresher: before he sold the Tom Ford brand to The Estée Lauder Companies for $2.8 billion in 2023, he was already two-for-two as a filmmaker. His debut, 'A Single Man' (2009), starred Colin Firth as a gay college professor grieving the loss of his partner — Firth earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for that performance. Then came 'Nocturnal Animals' (2016), a chilly psychological thriller with Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Michael Shannon. Taylor-Johnson picked up a Golden Globe for Supporting Actor; Shannon landed an Oscar nod in the same category.
So, to sum it up: a stylish filmmaker with awards pedigree, a daring Anne Rice story about ambition in the opera world, and Adele making her big-screen debut. That’s not subtle. That’s a statement.