William Shakespeare Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Alas, poor Yorick! Because when it comes to Hollywood, nothing is sacred. Variety reports that Eric Eisner (son of Hollywood heavyweight Michael Eisner) has struck a deal to produce Hamlet 2 under his shingle, L+E Productions. The film stars Steve Coogan (aka Alan Partridge) and Catherine Keener. The teen comedy (yes, it's a teen comedy) will focus on a struggling drama teacher who decides to write the ultimate in sequels, Hamlet 2, to save his drama department. Andy Fleming co-wrote the film with Team America: World Police scribe Pam Brady, and is also set to direct. Fleming also directed the Nancy Drew update with Emma Roberts earlier this year, and was responsible for 1996's The Craft, so he has plenty of experience when it comes to teen flicks.

This wouldn't be the first time that Shakespeare has been appropriated for "mall rats" -- and some attempts have been more successful than others. If you've seen Coogan in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, you know how funny he can make literary adaptations, so you never know, the film might actually have a chance. Coogan has been receiving some bad press from some unlikely places lately, which could damage his chances of breaking out in the U.S. He might be a household name in England, but most North Americans probably couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Next up for Coogan is the comedy biopic of England's first ski jumper, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, and then it's on to the Challenger disaster drama Safety Glass for Pop-up Video writer Jonathan Glatzer. Hamlet 2 is set to begin shooting on Sept. 17 in New Mexico.

We'll never know if Shakespeare would have appreciated She's the Man, an update of his play Twelfth Night: Or What You Will reset in teen sports comedy land. It is a good bet, at least, he's not rolling in his grave about it, at least no more than Ovid and Chaucer, among others, were rolling in theirs during the Elizabethan era, when the Bard put the poet in poetic license with his own reworking of classics like Pyramus and Thisbe (as Romeo and Juliet) and The Knight's Tale (as The Two Noble Kinsmen). Twelfth Night was itself somewhat a variation of his own The Comedy of Errors, an early title based rather faithfully on Plautus' Menaechmi.

The works of William Shakespeare remain one of the rare arguments in favor of remakes these days, as repeat after rehash after revival is met with great public disdain. There was little plot development he didn't lift from some prior story, but his genius was in how he told, not what he told, and it is the language of his writing that has carried distinction over time. It is therefore ironic that modern versions of his plays, in turn, inherit a sort of credibility by making a legacy out of the action.