The Sense and Sensibility 2026 film opens in UK cinemas on Friday 25 September, and if the timing feels a little providential (the autumnal equinox landing just days before) the conversations happening around it feel equally well-placed. Ahead of the release, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Fiona Shaw sat down with Stylist to talk about sisterhood, the enduring pull of Jane Austen, and whether the author would survive a single evening on Hinge.
The first major theatrical adaptation since Ang Lee’s 1995 classic
It is worth pausing on what this film actually represents. According to Books of Brilliance, this is the first major theatrical adaptation of Austen’s novel since Ang Lee’s celebrated 1995 version, which starred Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. Thirty years is a long time in cinema, long enough that a new interpretation carries genuine weight rather than the weary feeling of franchise recycling. The film had its premiere at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on 15 September 2026, before its wider UK release, with a US opening scheduled for 16 October 2026, per Wikipedia.
For the uninitiated: Sense and Sensibility centres on two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, navigating love, loss and the societal pressures of 19th-century England. Elinor is sense; Marianne is sensibility. The novel was Austen’s debut, and it has been adapted repeatedly, though never, it seems, quite like this.
Edgar-Jones plays Elinor. Marianne is played by Esmé Creed-Miles, and the pairing is not entirely new ground for the two of them: Books of Brilliance notes that Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles previously worked together as teenagers in the 2018 film Pond Life. There is something in that shared history that may well have contributed to the chemistry the film is built upon.
A story that puts the sisters at its centre
The screenplay, written by Diana Reid, drew an immediate response from Edgar-Jones. ‘When I read Diana’s screenplay, I was struck by how brilliantly witty it was and how so much of the love story felt like it was really about the sisters,’ she told Stylist. ‘It’s such a celebration of sisterhood and what those two women gift each other.’ She added that Austen is ‘such a wonderful part of the fabric of our culture,’ a fact the production seems to take seriously rather than use as a licence for reverence.
Shaw, who plays Mrs Jennings (a matchmaking figure the film positions as generous rather than merely gossipy) echoes the emphasis. ‘Georgia [Oakley, director] has made her perspective of the book, with the emphasis on the two sisters and what they have to go through in order to get to adulthood,’ she says. ‘There are other aspects of Austen that might be more about the community, but this really goes into the romance of those women.’
What the film seems to resist, then, is the temptation to make the male characters the engine. The Dashwood sisters drive it. Edgar-Jones spoke about the way long-term relationships, familial or otherwise, can calcify around the roles we first assume. ‘Traditionally, Elinor was always the sensible one, which allowed Marianne to be more in her passion and emotions,’ she says. ‘But what’s so beautiful is that, as the movie goes on, both sisters hold those qualities within themselves. By the end, they allow the other to grow, and that’s the essence of life, we are constantly changing.’
It is the kind of observation that makes the Sense and Sensibility 2026 film sound less like a costume drama and more like a film about becoming. Edgar-Jones admitted she is ‘quite Elinor-coded’ in real life, saying she tends to temper what she feels rather than express it. She cited a quote from Ethan Hawke about vulnerability in love as something she has been carrying with her. It is an unusual touchstone for a period drama, but that contrast is precisely the point.
What Austen would make of modern dating
Shaw is convinced Austen would be ‘appalled’ by contemporary romantic life. ‘She was quite cross, by all accounts,’ Shaw says of the author. ‘She saw through people. Her ability to whack people under the knee was quite severe, and I think she might find the lightness of people’s affections too light now.’ It is not a difficult argument to accept. Austen’s precision about human behaviour, her insistence on accountability within romantic life, does not map neatly onto a culture of ghosting.
Edgar-Jones takes a more generous view of the parallels. ‘I think, Willoughby aside, who is a walking red flag, I would say that Brandon and Edward are flawed but also complex,’ she says. ‘I think [Austen] celebrates that there isn’t a perfect idea of romance; that, actually, the messiness and the complexity of human emotion are what make a connection interesting. If it’s led with kindness, stick through it.’
Shaw is equally pointed on what the novel still has to say about women’s material lives. ‘Obviously, women are freer to be educated, but I see a lot of parents who are worried sick about their daughters going to university to make sure they get a good platform in order to get on in life, because otherwise they become vulnerable to the kindness of strangers or a husband,’ she says. ‘It has a lot to reply to.’
Sense and Sensibility, produced by Focus Features, is in UK cinemas from Friday 25 September 2026, and opens in the United States on 16 October 2026.
