Christopher Nolan’s new movie The Odyssey is based on Homer’s 2,700-year-old epic poem. There have been a lot of adaptations of The Odyssey over the past couple millennia, and some of them are so abstract most people don’t even realize they are adaptations.
That got us thinking about another author whose work is frequently remixed and presented as original: William Shakespeare. There have been a lot of undercover Shakespeare adaptations over the years, although in some cases, the fact that they’re Shakespeare adaptations is now well known. We’ll try to highlight more obscure entries.
Warm Bodies
Romeo and Juliet and braaaaaaains
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. The best-known undercover adaptation is the musical West Side Story, which was made into not one but two fantastic movies: one in 1961 and another in 2021.
Then there’s Warm Bodies, a 2013 zombie movie that’s loosely based on Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed love. Nicholas Hoult is R, a mostly mindless zombie who lives in an abandoned airport. One day he encounters Julie (Teresa Palmer), a normal human who’s looking for supplies in this post-apocalyptic world. Like Romeo and Juliet, R and Julie fall for each other despite them being on opposite sides of a war.
Warm Bodies also features a zombie named M, a nod to the character of Mercutio. The movie doesn’t have a tragic ending like Romeo and Juliet, but the basics are all there.
- Release Date
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January 31, 2013
- Runtime
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97 Minutes
- Director
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Jonathan Levine
Ex Machina
The Tempest but make it sci-fi
Ex Machina is a deeply unsettling movie about a programmer named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) who visits a billionaire’s secret enclave where he falls in love with a robotic woman named Eva (Alicia Vikander). Although the movie takes inspiration from several sources, one of the big ones is Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, about a vengeful wizard named Prospero who rules over an isolated island.
In Ex Machina, Prospero is roughly equivalent to Nathan, the billionaire (Oscar Isaac). Caleb is Ferdinand, the prince who ends up stranded on the island, and Ava is Prospero’s daughter Miranda. Unlike Warm Bodies, which takes Romeo and Juliet and gives it a much happier ending, the ending of Ex Machina is much more bleak than the one in The Tempest.
- Release Date
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April 24, 2015
- Runtime
-
108 minutes
- Director
-
Alex Garland
My Own Private Idaho
Keanu Reeves secretly does Shakespeare
My Own Private Idaho is loosely based on some of Shakespeare’s famous history plays: Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. These plays are about a prince who rejects his royal obligations to live among the common people. In My Own Private Idaho, Keanu Reeves plays Scott, the son of the mayor of Portland, who does much the same thing. And like Prince Hal, Scott eventually rejects this life and accepts his responsibilities. The character of Bob Pigeon (William Richert), a hedonistic father figure to Scott, is roughly equivalent to Falstaff in Shakespeare’s plays.
That said, My Own Private Idaho adds a story about the friendship between Scott and a hustler named Mike (River Phoenix), so it’s not a one-to-one adaptation.
- Release Date
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February 1, 1991
- Runtime
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104 Minutes
- Director
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Gus Van Sant
Get Over It
Part of the Shakespeare-in-high-school boom
In the early 2000s, Hollywood producers apparently all got the idea to take Shakespeare plays and set them in American high schools. The Taming of the Shrew became 10 Things I Hate About You, Twelfth Night became She’s The Man, The Merry Wives of Windsor was adapted as John Tucker Must Die, and Othello was worked over as O.
One of the lesser remembered movies from this period is Get Over It, about a guy named Berke (Ben Foster) who tries to win back his ex-girlfriend (Melissa Sagemiller) by getting a role in the school play, which is a rock-and-roll musical version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like in that play, there’s a series of romantic misadventures before Berke realizes he’s actually in love with someone else: Kelly, played by Kirsten Dunst.
Get Over It isn’t the best Shakespeare-but-in-high-school movie, but it is one of the few undercover adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is the Shakespeare play that gets performed most often. It’s weird that there aren’t more movie adaptations of it out there.
- Release Date
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March 9, 2001
- Runtime
-
87 Minutes
- Director
-
Tommy O’Haver
-
Kirsten Dunst
Kelly Woods
-
-
Melissa Sagemiller
Allison McAllister
-
Anyone But You
Much Ado About Nothing all over again
2023’s Anyone But You is a much newer romantic comedy based on a Shakespeare play, in this case Much Ado About Nothing. Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell play Bea and Ben, clearly analogs to the characters of Beatrice and Benedict. As in the play, Bea and Ben start off loathing each other, trade many barbs, and end up falling in love. There’s even some Shakespearean dialog worked over to sound more palatable to modern audiences.
Anyone But You did quite well at the box office, so maybe it will inspire a new wave of modern Shakespeare romcoms.
- Release Date
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December 22, 2023
- Runtime
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103 minutes
- Director
-
Will Gluck
-
-
-
-
Nat Buchanan
Miranda Clerk
Ran
Shakespeare in feudal Japan
Iconic Japanese director Arika Kurosawa loved making undercover Shakespeare adaptations. His 1957 film Throne of Blood is Macbeth disguised as a samurai drama. In 1985’s Ran, he took on King Lear. In the movie, the aging Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) tries to divide up his kingdom among his three sons, just as King Lear divides up his kingdom among his three daughters. Then Lear and Hidetora both watch the realm descend into chaos as they themselves slip further into madness.
In 1960, Kurosawa also remade Hamlet as a film noir drama called The Bad Sleep Well. And speaking of Hamlet…
- Release Date
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December 20, 1985
- Runtime
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160 Minutes
- Director
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Akira Kurosawa
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Tatsuya Nakadai
Lord Hidetora Ichimonji
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Akira Terao
Taro Takatora Ichimonji
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Jinpachi Nezu
Jiro Masatora Ichimonji
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Daisuke Ryu
Saburo Naotora Ichimonji
The Lion King
Disney does Hamlet
The Lion King is one of the better-known undercover Shakespeare adaptations, but we had to include it. In Hamlet, young Hamlet tries to avenge the murder of his father, who is killed by his ambitious uncle Claudius. In The Lion King, young Simba goes into exile after his own royal father — Musafa, one of the best movie dads of all time — is killed by his uncle Scar…and then comes back searching for justice. Other than the songs and the fact that everyone is a talking animal, the plot elements are largely the same.
- Release Date
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June 15, 1994
- Runtime
-
89 minutes
- Director
-
Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff
-
Matthew Broderick
Simba (voice)
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Nathan Lane
Timon (voice)
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Ernie Sabella
Pumbaa (voice)
More where that came from
There are other undercover Shakespeare adaptations out there; for instance, the 1988 Bette Midler movie Big Business is based on The Comedy of Errors. Shakespeare wrote a lot of beloved plays, so we’ll probably be getting adaptations like this until the end of time.
