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How Emile Hirsch wants Hamlet to be a scary horror film
Word has spread that Speed Racer's Emile Hirsch will join Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke for an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and now the star tells us that his brooding hero will be more Cobain than Dane, with ghosts.
"We want to make it like a horror, scary-movie Hamlet," Hirsch said. "Like a supernatural with like a mystical bent to it, set in college and following these cool characters. It's all in Shakespeare verse, so it's going to be kind of like the cool, darker answer to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. We're making Hamlet a musician, so it should be pretty cool."
Hirsch plans to take on the Bard after his turn in Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock. "Hopefully the final financing [will come together] on this Hamlet movie me and Catherine Hardwicke want to make with one another, this modern adaptation," he said.
Shakespeare's material has lent itself to myriad updates and new contexts, such as Luhrmann's Miami-set reinvention of Romeo, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes, and Richard Loncraine's World War II-tinged Richard III, starring Ian McKellen.
So why not a Twilight-infused Hamlet? Stay tuned ...
By fury161 at 8:45 PM ON 08/27/09
Great, let's take a pillar of classic literature and crap on it with teen/vampire goodness.
By Cris at 8:58 PM ON 08/27/09
You're being purposely obtuse.
Catherine Hardwick directed Twilight; now, she's directing Hamlet. I don't think she'll be fusing the two; don't be a dick.
Having said that, I'm looking forward to this. I enjoyed both DiCaprio's Romeo & Juliet, and 10 things I Hate About You; both based on Shakespeare (though, obviously, one far more faithful to the material), both extremely enjoyable.
By Matt at 9:37 PM ON 08/27/09
"It's all in Shakespeare verse, so it's going to be kind of like the cool, darker answer to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet."
There was an adaptation of Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke (Hamlet) and Bill Murray (Polonius) that attempted this. It didn't work very well.
By Alikhat at 4:07 AM ON 08/28/09
Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet was a train wreck of bad acting, horrible casting, ghastly direction and epilepsy-inducing editing and, based on the description given, I fully expect this will follow in its spastic footsteps.
By Thom at 10:54 AM ON 08/28/09
YARM! Thanks for raping my childhood Emile Hirsch. I saw the Laurence Olivier version when I was a kid, and. . . .
Oh, wait a minute. Shakespeare's play was a remake of an earlier story, wasn't it?
Uhm . . . thanks for raping my past life, Shakespeare, I saw the Ur-Hamlet before I was reincarnated. . . .
My only worry is that this "scary-movie version" of HAMLET that him and Catherine Hardwicke want to make with one another, this modern adaptation, is going to star someone who like can't like talk very good and has like poor grammar and like says "like" a lot.
By Acceler8 at 11:44 AM ON 08/28/09
I'm waiting for a movie adaptation of a Shakespeare play that has a futuristic science fiction setting.
By ripleycal at 11:49 AM ON 08/28/09
@Acceler8: That would be Forbidden Planet, 1956, based on "The Tempest."
By Acceler8 at 10:16 AM ON 08/29/09
ripleycal: I guess I should have said an actual Shakespeare play transposed to a futuristic science fiction setting, along the lines of Ian McKellen's Richard III in a fascist 1930's England.
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Acceler8:
ripleycal: I guess I should have said an actual Shakespeare play transposed to a futuristic science fiction setting...More »