Robert Eggers To Take On Romeo & Juliet Adaptation

With four features already under his belt and a fifth one incoming later this year, filmmaker Robert Eggers has already taken on a new, exciting project: an adaptation of playwright William Shakespeare’s 1500s play, Romeo and Juliet.

The Elizabethan play features two lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, who meet and fall in love despite coming from feuding families. What follows is a twisted path of romance, bitterness, and demise as the young lovers struggle to overcome the hatred their families share for one another.

The adaptation is set to come under Focus Features, marking the director’s second collaboration with the studio following his upcoming film Werwulf. It’s been confirmed that Eggers’s take will keep the dialogue in the original Olde English, likewise to Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation titled Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes, which set Shakespeare’s classic tale of star-crossed lovers in 1995’s L.A.

Another previous famous adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 rendition, featuring Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in the titular roles

There are around 50 direct cinematic retellings of what is cited historically as one of the greatest love stories of all time, with the first adaptations being a 1908 silent picture directed by J. Stuart Blackton, followed by a 1916 feature film by director duo Francis X. Bushman and John W. Noble. The first talkie depiction of Shakespeare’s romantic-tragedy play came in 1936, directed by George Cukor and starring Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer.

Features cited as loose inspirations include 1961’s musical West Side Story by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 2000’s action flick Romeo Must Die by Andrzej Bartkowiak and 2011’s animated Gnomeo & Juliet by Kelly Asbury.

Read more about book adaptations here 

Meanwhile, this will mark Eggers’s sixth film as well as his fourth adaptation or inspiration of an already written prose. His 2015 debut, The Witch, is an original story featuring Anya Taylor-Joy, which went on to be hailed as one of the 21st century’s greatest horror films.

This smashing debut was followed by 2019’s brain-bender, The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in a puzzling story inspired by the Edgar Allan-Poe short story of the same name, as well as poetry and mythology. His third film, 2022’s The Northman, was based on Saxo Grammaticus’s legend of Amleth, titled Gesta Danorum, while his 2024 Gothic horror, Nosferatu, is a remake of the 1922 silent masterpiece of the same name, which in turn was an unofficial film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.

Werwulf is set to be an original story, centred as a period Gothic folk horror narrating a 14th-century town which becomes terrorised by a bloodthirsty beast. The film will star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Dafoe, and Lily-Rose Depp, who all return after Nosferatu.

Werwulf hits US cinemas on 25th December and UK cinemas on 1st January, 2027. 

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Ros Tibbs

Editor

Ros is a film and lit graduate writing news and reviews at The People's Magazine. She also writes long-form film theory, film history, analytical or curated recommendations pieces on other platforms.

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