Exactly How Much Is Armie Hammer Actually in 'Death on the Nile'?

The release of Death on the Nile (after many delays reaching as far back as November 2019) was preceded by a set of promo images and trailers that seemed to minimize the amount Armie Hammer is in the film.

These promotional items came out after the actor was hit with accusations of sexual abuse and rape (which he denies). When the trailer came out, many online pointed out how little Hammer was in it – a Sun headline, for example, described him as "nearly cut out" of the promo, while Variety said he "barely" featured. His character also did not get an individual poster.

With the Call Me By Your Name actor featuring so little in the trailer, viewers could be led to believe he only plays a small, supporting performance in the film. However, that is not quite the case.

Read on for a breakdown of Hammer's role in the new Kenneth Branagh movie.

How much screentime does Armie Hammer get in Death on the Nile?

SPOILER GUIDE: The following gives away details about the whole plot of Death on the Nile (including who dies), but does not reveal who the killer is or whether Hammer's character survives the film.

Unfortunately for the film's chances of escaping controversy, Hammer is in the Agatha Christie adaptation a lot—perhaps explaining why the movie did not pull a Chris D'Elia in Army of the Dead (or a Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World) and recast the character.

In the film, Hammer plays Simon Doyle, the husband of the woman whose murder is central to the plot, Linnet Doyle (nee Ridgeway, played by Gal Gadot).

After the prologue set during Hercule Poirot's (Kenneth Branagh) World War One service, Simon is one of the first characters we meet. We see Branagh visiting a jazz club, where singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo) is performing thanks to her niece and manager Rosalie (Letitia Wright).

While Poirot makes his way through the club's dessert menu, he is keeping an eye on his fellow audience members. Among them is Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey) and Simon, who at this point is engaged to Simon. Jacqueline sees her old friend Linnet at the club, and persuades her to offer Simon a job.

By the next scene, Simon seems to have left Jacqueline and is celebrating his marriage to Linnet—a marriage we see in the trailer. The scene of Simon at the dance club also featured in the trailer, though the editors chose to include shots that minimized Hammer's part in the scene—in one shot, for example, he is totally blocked by his dance party.

The actual film is much less coy about Hammer's involvement. As essentially one of the two lead characters (not including Poirot), the actors gets a fair share of close-ups, and is central to the plot throughout. It is, after all, his wedding that most of the film is set at, and his wife who is the murderer's (or murderers') hapless victim.

Of the film's main three acts (not including the prologue), he has a major part to play in two of them. He and Gadot get much of the screentime in the section where they meet and get married, and of course he features in the finale in which Poirot reveals exactly whodunit.

Where he appears less, however, is in the central section, in which Poirot is investigating the crime. His character is physically incapacitated throughout most of this section, which is mostly told via a series of one- (or two-)on-one interrogations between Poirot and the various suspects.

With Hammer in so much of the film, across many sets and interacting with many cast members, it may have been too impractical and too expensive to replace him. Variety predicted that replacing Spacey cost All the Money in the World cost upward of $10 million, and he only appeared in a few locations alongside a few actors. Army of the Dead producer Deborah Snyder, meanwhile said it cost about as much to replace D'Elia with Tig Notaro as it cost to make the entirety of the movie's prequel, Army of Thieves—and that was only a pretty small role.

Death on the Nile is in cinemas now, and coming soon to Disney+.