Jude Law and Alicia Vikander star as real-life King Henry VIII and his sixth wife, Katherine Parr, in Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand trailer.
The film, based on true 16th-century events, follows Parr’s pursuit of survival in her marriage to the king, after the first five of his wives met untimely ends — divorced, beheaded, died, divorced and beheaded again.
“Katherine’s fate was to change the kingdom, forever,” the trailer’s narrator muses.
“When Henry appoints [Katherine] as Regent, the nation’s ruler during his absence when he departs to fight overseas, he lays a dangerous path for her,” the Firebrand synopsis reads. “Henry’s courtiers, suspecting she’s sympathetic to radical Protestant beliefs that have taken root in the kingdom and are a threat to their power, scheme against her and cast doubts upon her fidelity to the increasingly ailing and paranoid King.”
When the king returns, his courtiers convince him to “turn his fury” on his wife’s childhood friend, Anne Askew, who became one of the many Henry’s court convicted of treason and burned at the stake.
“Horrified and privately grieving, Katherine finds herself under ever-increasing scrutiny and suspicion,” the description continued. “Knowing that even a whisper of scandal might lead to her downfall, Katherine must unleash her own scheme to fight for survival.”
Katherine and Henry remained married from 1543 until the king’s death in 1547. Twice-married before her union with the king, she then married a fourth and final time after his passing, unfortunately dying in childbirth at age 36 in 1548.
Firebrand premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last May and is now set to be released in theaters June 14. It was written by Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth and is based on the 2013 novel Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle.
