The just-out official teaser for Roland Emmerich‘s Anonymous (Sony, 9.23), an Elizabethan period drama that explores whether Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans), the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays attributed to William “Bardo” Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), begins with a present-day sequence in which a lecturer (Derek Jacobi) suggests/speculates that Will “never wrote a word.”

But the teaser, obviously, is selling anything and everything but literary authorship.

Inside Guy: “That’s because it’s not about literary authorship! It’s about more than that, I mean.” HE: “I’ll say…sound and fury, a naked backside, a guy getting his head chopped off.” Inside Guy: “That’s a naked guy, you realize…right?” HE: “So no undraped women?” Inside Guy: “We fought for that and it’s in there. And the guy getting his head chopped off is the Earl of Essex. The Essex rebellion happens in the third act.”

I don’t know, man. Emmerich has always been Emmerich, y’know? A leopard can’t change his spots.

Inside Guy: “You will not believe this is a Roland Emmerich film. He’s truly made a fantastic film, one that has almost nothing to do with his other work. I think it will really challenge some people’s preconceptions about his filmmaking abilities.” HE: “I’m not doubting you for a second, but the Sony trailer is obviously suggesting that Anonymous is right off the Emmerich assembly line…no offense.”

Here’s a high-resolution version of the teaser.