Films The Great Lillian Hall

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The Great Lillian Hall poster

Film · 2024

The Great Lillian Hall

Directed by Michael Cristofer · starring Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Lily Rabe

  • 1 h 50 min
  • 12
  • Adventure · Biography · History
  • USA
  • Released in the UK 9 November 2025
Where to watch · from 3.49 GBP Rate it

Synopsis

In the four-plus years 'Deathtrap' ran on Broadway, Marian Seldes didn't miss a single performance, a record that put her in the Guinness Book of Records. Her niece, the screenwriter Elisabeth Seldes Annacone, drew loosely on her for 'The Great Lillian Hall', an HBO film directed by Michael Cristofer about an actress whose whole life is the theatre.

Lillian Hall is the grande dame of Broadway, a performer who has never missed a show, not for her daughter and not for any illness. She's now preparing Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard', playing Lyubov Ranevskaya, but in rehearsals she starts forgetting her lines and suffering lapses that point to the first signs of dementia.

Lillian moves from denial to defiance, while the people around her start to wonder whether the production can go ahead with her, or without her. Beside her are Edith, her assistant of many years, and Margaret, a daughter who still resents everything Lillian gave up for her career.

Jessica Lange leads the cast with Kathy Bates and Lily Rabe, both of whom she'd worked with on 'American Horror Story'. Jesse Williams plays the play's director and Pierce Brosnan her neighbour. The project was announced in 2021 as 'Places, Please', with Meryl Streep in the lead, but it was eventually shot in the spring of 2023 in Atlanta and Marietta, Georgia, where the Strand Theatre served as a location.

HBO premiered it in the US on 31 May 2024. Lange and the film were both nominated at the Critics Choice Awards, Bates earned a Screen Actors Guild nomination and Seldes Annacone won the Writers Guild of America award for her script.

Where to watch The Great Lillian Hall

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Available now in the UK:

Availability checked on 3 November 2026.

The essentials

Runtime
110 min1 hour and 50 minutes
Rating
12Suitable for 12 years and over
How long is The Great Lillian Hall?
1 hour and 50 minutes (110 minutes).
When was The Great Lillian Hall released in the UK?
It was released in the UK on 9 November 2025.
Who directed The Great Lillian Hall?
Michael Cristofer.
Who is in The Great Lillian Hall?
It stars Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Lily Rabe and Jesse Williams.
Where can I watch The Great Lillian Hall?
In the UK you can watch it on rent on Apple TV and Prime Video.
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Cast

Full cast (22)
Director
Michael Cristofer
Producers
Kathy Bates, Michael Cristofer, Jessica Lange
Cinematography
Simon Dennis

Photos and posters

All 7 photos

Reviews

All 5 reviews

What the critics say average 7.7 from 5 outlets

  • 8.0 The Hollywood ReporterCaryn James Despite that ominous theme, The Great Lillian Hall is a lovely tribute to life in the theater, with all its personal compromises, and a showcase for Lange, who deftly shows the character as a… Read
  • 8.0 New York TimesElisabeth Vincentelli Like many of the best golden-age melodramas, this HBO film fully commits to both unabashed emotion and a complicated female lead, a role filled by Jessica Lange with a finely tuned mix of… Read
  • 8.0 ABC NewsPeter Travers “The Great Lillian Hall” is Lange's latest master class. Sit back and behold. Read

Awards

All the awards

Soundtrack

All 4 songs
  1. Mockingbird LullabyAmanda McBroom
  2. Shine On, Harvest MoonArranged, Jason Todd Shannon
  3. Purple BambooCheng Yu
  4. Hush Little BabyJessica Lange, Lily Rabe

Trivia

All 13 facts

  • Meryl Streep was going to be Lillian

    The project was announced in 2021 as 'Places, Please', with Meryl Streep in the lead and a shoot planned for New York. In the end the part went to Jessica Lange and 'The Great Lillian Hall' was filmed in Georgia.

  • The director has been in 'The Cherry Orchard' himself

    In 1977 Michael Cristofer played the student Trofimov in Andrei Serban's production of 'The Cherry Orchard' at Lincoln Center in New York. Meryl Streep was in the cast too, as the maid Dunyasha, and Irene Worth played Ranevskaya, the part Lillian rehearses in the film.

  • A niece behind the script

    Screenwriter Elisabeth Seldes Annacone is the niece of the actress Marian Seldes, who loosely inspired 'The Great Lillian Hall'. The heroine's surname also matches the maiden name of Marian's mother, Alice Wadhams Hall.

  • The film stops at the brink, on purpose

    Jessica Lange told TheWrap that the story takes Lillian's dementia "just up to a certain point". It was Michael Cristofer who "decided not to go there", into the later stages of the illness, and she called it "a great decision".

  • It was meant for cinemas

    'The Great Lillian Hall' was first lined up for a cinema release, but HBO bought it at the last minute and premiered it on 31 May 2024, the day before the cutoff for that year's Emmys.

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