100 Nights of Hero

100 Nights of Hero is a British fantasy romance film written and directed by Julia Jackman, adapted from Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel The One Hundred Nights of Hero. The project brings Greenberg’s storybook-like, queer reworking of Scheherazade-style storytelling to the screen rather than treating it as a conventional historical drama. Its premise centres on Cherry, a woman left at home when her husband, Jerome, accepts a wager with his friend Manfred. Jerome believes Manfred cannot seduce Cherry during one hundred nights; the bet turns Cherry’s safety and autonomy into the stakes of the tale.

To protect Cherry, Hero tells Manfred a continuing sequence of tales, ensuring that the would-be seducer returns night after night to hear what follows. The framing device gives the film its title and connects its romance to the book’s central act of resistance: storytelling becomes a means of buying time. Greenberg’s source material, first published by Jonathan Cape in 2016, was shortlisted for the 2017 Costa Book Awards in the Novel category. Its nested narratives draw on folk tales, myths, and stories of women whose desires and choices are controlled by men.

The announced cast is led by Emma Corrin as Hero, Maika Monroe as Cherry, Nicholas Galitzine as Manfred, and Richard E. Grant as Jerome. Corrin previously earned an Emmy nomination for playing Diana, Princess of Wales in The Crown; Monroe is known for It Follows; Galitzine played George in Red, White & Royal Blue; and Grant received an Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? Their participation places performers with very different screen personas inside Jackman’s deliberately fantastical world. Charli XCX, Felicity Jones, and Amir El-Masry were also announced among the ensemble, expanding a cast that mixes pop, independent-film, television, and major-studio experience.

Jackman made her feature-directing debut with Bonus Track, a coming-of-age comedy that premiered at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival. For 100 Nights of Hero, Jackman adapts Greenberg’s novel into a screenplay built around its central stories-within-stories structure. The film was produced by Erebus Pictures and was announced in 2024. Its development is notable because Greenberg’s novel is not simply a retelling of One Thousand and One Nights: it uses the pressure of a fixed deadline, the wager, and Hero’s performances as a storyteller to examine power, companionship, and the possibilities created when women tell stories for one another. That focus decisively distinguishes its fantasy from passive princess narratives.