Director of cult horror hit Prevenge is turning one of Shakespeare's most famous comedies into a scary movie: "I don’t see why it couldn’t be revisited with how terrifying and odd everything happens in it"

Alice Lowe, the director of cult horror hit Prevenge, is turning her sights to an Elizabethan classic for her next project: she's adapting William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into a horror movie.

"I wanted to make a classic and it struck me that Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I know so well, is always made in the same way over and over," Lowe told Deadline. "It’s so genuinely funny. But also fey and fairies and blah blah blah. But I don’t see why it couldn’t be revisited with how terrifying and odd everything happens in it, and how the undercurrents are actually so dark and strange."

Per Deadline, Lowe will write, direct, and have a key (but not lead) role in the film. She also starred in her previous two outings as writer-director: the 2016 slasher comedy Prevenge, about a pregnant widow who's convinced her fetus wants her to go on vengeful killing spree, and the 2024 time-travelling rom-com Timestalker.

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Shakespeare's original play follows several interlinking plots, including the marriage of the Duke of Athens to the Queen of the Amazons, a complicated love quadrangle between four lovers, and a group of actors rehearsing for a play. These three groups all end up in a forest inhabited by fairies, who wish to manipulate the humans for their own amusement.

The play has been adapted for the big screen many times, most famously in 1999. This version starred Christian Bale, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Stanley Tucci.

Lowe's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream doesn't have a release date yet. While we wait for more updates, check out our guide to the best upcoming horror movies still to come in 2025.