Himesh Patel, Maxine Peake Lead Booker Prize Short Films
The short films featuring stars reading from the titles shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize have landed.
The stars reading this year are Lewis Gribben (Black Mirror), Kathryn Hunter (Black Doves), Paterson Joseph (Wonka), Himesh Patel (The Odyssey), Maxine Peake (I Swear) and Savannah Steyn (House of the Dragon). Director and choreographer Holly Blakey directs the six two-minute films, the second time she has helmed Booker shorts.
Patel reads from Luke Kennard’s ‘Black Bag’ and Hunter from ‘The End of Everything’ by M. John Harrison.
Joseph’s short is a reading from ‘The Disappearers’ by Marlon James, who is a previous Booker Prize winner and early favorite for the 2026 prize.
Steyn reads from ‘May We Feed the King’ by Rebecca Perry, Peake reads from ‘The Things We Never Say’ by Elizabeth Strout. Gribben’s excerpt is from ‘John of John’ by Douglas Stuart.
The Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. Since 2022, its organizers have recruited stars from the worlds of film, TV and music to read excerpts from the shortlisted tomes. They have gone on to generate big numbers on YouTube and social media; the Booker Prize 2025 and International Booker Prize 2026 films have a combined 132M views.
“This year we wanted to push the visual language somewhere new, shooting much of it outside and finding something looser, more textural and alive in the process,” Blakey said. “It was less about narrativizing the books for me, more about searching for the feelings they leave you with – fear, humour, the great voids between us, or something altogether more existential.”
“Every year, the short films we make of extracts from the Booker Prizes shortlists draw more and more readers to the books,” added Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation. “It’s also a fantastic opportunity for us to work with a range of creative people in an art form adjacent to literature, and this latest set of films is our most ambitious yet.”
The films are produced for the Booker Prize Foundation by Park Pictures.
There is a strong link between Booker titles and film and TV. Adaptations of previous winners or shortlisted books include The Remains of the Day, Atonement, Normal People, The Handmaid’s Tale, Wolf Hall and Life of Pi.
Last year’s winning book was ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay. He told Deadline a film adaptation is in the cards, with Conclave banner House Productions handling the adaptation.
Check out Patel’s short above. The other five are available on Booker’s YouTube channel.
