{"id":248761,"date":"2025-11-07T05:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T05:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/248761\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T05:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T05:49:09","slug":"the-testament-of-ann-lee-trailer-teases-amanda-seyfried-in-musical-epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/248761\/","title":{"rendered":"The Testament Of Ann Lee Trailer Teases Amanda Seyfried In Musical Epic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you watched Brady Corbet&#8217;s Oscar-winning architectural behemoth The Brutalist earlier this year and found yourself thinking, &#8220;Yeah, this is great, but it&#8217;d be even better if it was actually a historical epic musical about the founder of the Shaker Movement,&#8221; then A) we admire the specificity of your cinematic taste, and B) you are in luck! With The Testament Of Ann Lee, Corbet&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.empireonline.com\/movies\/reviews\/the-brutalist\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Brutalist<\/a> co-writer, partner, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.empireonline.com\/movies\/reviews\/the-world-to-come\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The World To Come<\/a> filmmaker Mona Fastvold returns to the directorial hotseat for precisely that \u2014 a historical epic musical starring Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, the progressivist founder of, well, the Shaker Movement. For those in search of song, dance, and a glimpse into the making of an 18th century religious utopia, check out the trailer below;<\/p>\n<p>This may not be Amanda Seyfried&#8217;s first rodeo starring as a near-saintly figure in a religiously charged musical epic, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.empireonline.com\/movies\/reviews\/les-miserables-3-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/a> this most assuredly ain&#8217;t \u2014 at least not if the minute or so of footage here is anything to go by. Co-written by Corbet and Fastvold, shot on sumptuous 35mm film, and boasting choreography from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.empireonline.com\/movies\/reviews\/vox-lux-review\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Vox Lux<\/a>&#8216;s Celia Rowlson-Hall set to music from The Brutalist composer Daniel Blumberg, The Testament Of Ann Lee follows Seyfried&#8217;s Mancunian religious leader as she sets sail for America, seeking to establish a utopian society rooted in faith, worship, celibacy, and equality. As the above trailer shows however, Lee&#8217;s is a path strewn with temptation, hardship, and liberal smatterings of song-and-dance.<\/p>\n<p>The (abridged) official synopsis for the movie \u2014 which also stars Lewis Pullman, Thomasin Mckenzie, Stacy Martin, Christopher Abbott, and Tim Blake Nelson \u2014 reads as follows: &#8220;From award-winning writer-director Mona Fastvold comes the extraordinary true legend of Ann Lee, founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. Amanda Seyfried stars as the Shaker&#8217;s irrepressible leader, who preached gender and social equality and was revered by her followers. The Testament Of Ann Lee captures the ecstasy and agony of her quest to build a utopia, featuring more than a dozen traditional Shaker hymns reimagined as rapturous movements.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Having lit up the Venice Film Festival back in September, where Seyfried&#8217;s performance was met with an astonishing 15-minute standing ovation, all the omens point towards The Testament Of Ann Lee being a cinematic event not to be missed. If you start practicing your clapping now, you should be ready for the movie&#8217;s release on 20 February, 2026. Probably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you watched Brady Corbet&#8217;s Oscar-winning architectural behemoth The Brutalist earlier this year and found yourself thinking, &#8220;Yeah,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-248761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}