I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you how it’s shifted for me over the years. The story and the language should give filmmakers a foundation on which they can build whatever they want.Īs for what makes it enduring, I think there’s the obvious appeal of a tragic love story, but it’s a work that’s rich in ways beyond a tale of doomed kids in love. My favorites of the last couple of decades include Richard Loncraine’s Ian McKellen-starring Richard III, Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet, Ralph Fiennes’ underseen Coriolanus, and, yes, Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which when I saw it in the ’90s-in a theater packed with sobbing undergrads-seemed like the perfect adaptation for a generation that grew up watching MTV. Keith: You may be asking the wrong person that question, Genevieve, since my taste in cinematic Shakespeare adaptations is pretty particular: I generally prefer those that keep the text intact and freely mess with everything else. Do you think it’s even possible (or advisable) to do a straightforward take on Romeo And Juliet at this point? Would you still consider this a “traditional” rendering of Shakespeare’s play, given that the original text has been replaced by Fellowes-penned dialogue? And beyond that, I’m curious what the two of you think is so enduring about this story, and what makes it so ripe for adaptation.
Tasha, since you’re the only one of us who has actually seen the latest Romeo And Juliet, I’ll leave it to you to discuss where it fits along the spectrum of adaptations. If asked to delineate the difference between a Romeo And Juliet adaptation and a film inspired by Romeo And Juliet, I’d point to the ending as a potential litmus test Shakespeare’s play is a tragedy, not a romance, and films that focus on the latter at the expense of the former-like, oh, let’s say Step Up-are telling a very different story than Shakespeare told. Many (but not all) of these versions seize on the “forbidden love” part of the story, and scrap the whole double-suicide thing in favor of a happier, or at least less-established, ending. And then there are the countless films that use the classic tale of forbidden love as a jumping-off point for a reshaped, nominally original story: your West Side Storys, your Underworlds, your Gnomeo And Juliets. There are also a fair number of interpolations that tell the story straight, but through a different stylistic lens-Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 music-videoization being the most prominent, but the various filmed version of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet version would also fit under this heading.
The new Romeo And Juliet is ostensibly a “traditional” take on the material (it isn’t really, but more on that in a minute), in the vein of classic films like those made by George Cukor in 1936 and Franco Zeffirelli in 1968, either or both of which are likely familiar to anyone who’s taken a high-school literature course. The intervening century or so has seen dozens more-potentially hundreds, if you factor in all the movies that use the building blocks of the original play without being strict adaptations. The most recent iteration is Carlo Carlei’s Julian Fellowes-scripted adaptation, starring Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth as the titular doomed lovers. The first recorded American film version of the classic tragedy was a 1908 silent short directed by Stuart Blackton, though it’s thought to be predated by earlier attempts from George Méliès and Thomas Edison that have since been lost. Reps for the actor tell Vanity Fair that Stanfield is still attached.Genevieve: For nearly as long as there have been motion pictures, there have been motion-picture adaptations of William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet.
Per Deadline, the script for Lee’s adaptation will be cowritten by Hinds, Lee, and Wimberly.
A script was penned by former editor in chief of the Source Selwyn Seyfu Hinds ( The Twilight Zone). There were rumblings in 2018 that Legendary was putting together an adaptation of Prince of Cats as a star vehicle for none other than Lakeith Stanfield, a perfect bit of casting. It would be illegal for Lee to consider not making this movie, no? The story, based on Ron Wimberly’s graphic novel, shifts the narrative to Tybalt’s perspective, following Juliet’s furious cousin as he sword-fights his sworn enemies, the Montagues. Per Deadline, the director has signed on to helm an adaptation of Prince of Cats, a hip-hop version of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet set in 1980s-era New York. The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who picked up his first Academy Award earlier this year for best adapted screenplay for BlacKkKlansman, has lined up a project that seems all but made for him, and returns him to the milieu that defined his career with 1989’s Do the Right Thing.
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