Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met ascends in the first trail­er for The King

At long last, the Cha­la­met drought has end­ed. Tim­o­th­ée Chalamet’s been large­ly out of the spot­light since his drug-addic­tion dra­ma Beau­ti­ful Boy debuted around this time last year, but after 12 long months, he’s returned in a big way.

The trail­er for Gre­ta Gerwig’s adap­ta­tion of Lit­tle Women rein­tro­duced the sen­si­tive, long-haired, weep­ing Tim­my we so know and love. Today, how­ev­er, cinephiles can dou­ble up on the Cha­la­met with the trail­er for David Michôd’s The King, which finds the gen­tle-faced actor don­ning a more seri­ous expres­sion and a dou­bly seri­ous bowl cut.

He’s shorn his locks to por­tray King Hen­ry V in Michôd’s medieval epic mash­ing up sev­er­al of the Bard’s his­to­ries. He begins as the low­ly Hal, then rapid­ly ascends the lad­der of pow­er in the wake of his father’s death to ulti­mate­ly real­ize his des­tiny as the new sav­ior of England.

Along the way, he makes the acquain­tance of the cor­pu­lent Fal­staff (Joel Edger­ton), thinks back on the words of his father (Ben Mendel­sohn), and cross­es paths with the haughty French Dauphin (Robert Pat­tin­son). While the script seem­ing­ly stays faith­ful to Shakespeare’s orig­i­nal text, a mod­ern action film­mak­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty informs the mas­sive­ly scaled bat­tle scenes, as hors­es plow into hordes of heav­i­ly armored sol­diers bear­ing all man­ner of pointy sticks.

It’s curi­ous to see Cha­la­met and Pat­tin­son shar­ing screen time here; per­haps young Tim has tak­en up the for­mer R‑Pattz mis­sion to test his mas­sive female following’s ded­i­ca­tion by appear­ing in increas­ing­ly obscure, oblique auteur pictures.

The King arrives on Net­flix lat­er this year.