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For as long as there have been films, there have been movies based on Shakespeare. Whether you love "The Bard" or stay haunted by high school English classes, there's no denying that Shakespeare has left an irremovable mark on the world of cinema. But it's hard ranking all the greatest Shakespeare movies. To think about it – o, full of scorpions is my mind!
Beginning with the four-minute silent movie King John in 1899, William Shakespeare has enjoyed an enduring presence in the art and business of motion pictures. He's the one "franchise" anyone in the world can remake and reinterpret, with countless filmmakers having found new angles to centuries-old material. Some wind up cinematic classics, while others—well, let's just say there's no greatness thrust upon them.
Article continues below33. Hamlet
Year: 2000
Director: Michael Almareyda
In what can be only described as a "post-Matrix" take on Hamlet, Michael Almareyda's 2000 film retains the dialogue of Shakespeare's epic tragedy while transporting the story to modern New York City. Video surveillance, computers, nightclubs pulsating with Europop – the world of Almareyda's Hamlet is precisely what Manhattan was like at the dawn of the 21st century. Ethan Hawke stars as Hamlet, a film student and heir to the Denmark Corporation, while Kyle MacLachlan plays Claudius, who becomes CEO after the death of Hamlet's father (Sam Shepard). Almareyda's execution is more novelty than it is inspired, watching Hawke perform "To Be or Not to Be" between the aisles of a Blockbuster Video is kind of charming.
32. Macbeth
Year: 2006
Director: Geoffrey Wright
Australian filmmaker Geoffrey Wright is far from the first to helm a "modernized" retelling of Shakespeare. But his 2006 indie feature Macbeth may be one of the more interesting, in how it keeps the dialogue but reframes the story into a modern gangster flick. A pre-Avatar Sam Worthington stars as the doomed Macbeth, who is foretold by three schoolgirl witches that he will soon own a Melbourne nightclub until his ambition becomes his undoing. Though the movie looks tawdry and low-rent, like a Saturday night skin flick on premium cable, Wright's Macbeth relishes in the grit that Shakespeare's most acclaimed tragedy has long maintained and champions.
31. Forbidden Planet
Year: 1956
Director: Nicholas Nayfack
The classic sci-fi hit Forbidden Planet may not seem like a Shakespearean movie. But look past its pulpy surface, and you'll find William Shakespeare's The Tempest in disguise. Echoing the premise of The Tempest, Forbidden Planet follows a 23rd-century spaceship crew who land on a distant planet and discover two survivors: Dr Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), a stand-in for Prospero, and his daughter, Altaira (Anne Francis), who is analogous to Miranda, not to mention their companion Robby the Robot (Ariel, basically). The only big difference is how each story ends, with The Tempest ending on a happier note while Forbidden Planet ends in destruction.
30. Twelfth Night
Year: 1996
Director: Trevor Nunn
Like many other filmmakers, Trevor Nunn finds a new setting for a classic Shakespeare play while keeping the spirit of the original story and its themes intact. In this case, it's Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's timeless romantic comedy about love, mistaken identities, and disguises, now set against a 19th-century war-torn European coastal town. While Nunn makes several major changes and overall makes some questionable creative choices, Twelfth Night is still a funny romance about challenging societal expectations. It's a movie that almost makes Shakespeare walk hand-in-hand with Jane Austen.
29. Tromeo and Juliet
Year: 1996
Director: Lloyd Kaufman
Long before James Gunn was the leading creative on multi-million superhero tentpoles, he was protege to Lloyd Kaufman, whose Troma Entertainment specialized in splatter-ific B-movies that blended horror and comedy with heaping doses of blood and mature fun. In 1996, the studio enjoyed modest success with its vulgar riff on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, simply titled Tromeo and Juliet, co-written by James Gunn and directed by Kaufman. As the title implies, Tromeo and Juliet reimagines the story of star-crossed lovers in a way only Troma could. Gone are the scenic sights of Verona, and in its place, squalid apartments, tattoo parlors, underground clubs, and lots of low-budget violence. Tromeo and Juliet is not for the faint of heart, but it dares to imagine Shakespeare with even more filth than the Bard ever had himself.
28. Hamlet 2
Year: 2008
Director: Andrew Fleming
For all of Shakespeare's impact on the world, no one has dared to make a sequel to any of his plays. That is until Steve Coogan came along. In 2008, the British comic took center stage in the delirious indie comedy Hamlet 2, which chronicles the misguided efforts of an Arizona high school drama teacher who writes and directs an "original" play: a musical sequel to Shakespeare's Hamlet. What starts out as a passion project to inspire students balloons into a free speech battle, complete with sing songs like "Rock Me Sexy Jesus." Not all of the jokes in Hamlet 2 land, and in an era oversaturated by raunchiness, it could only dream of box office profit. But in hindsight, Hamlet 2 is anything but rotten in the state of Denmark.
27. Othello
Year: 1995
Director: Oliver Parker
Shakespeare's enduring tragedy of passion and betrayal gets its platonic ideal movie adaptation in Oliver Parker's 1995 feature Othello, also the first major screen production of Othello to star a Black actor. The Matrix's Laurence Fishburne takes the spotlight as the title hero, who is misled by the conniving Iago (Kenneth Branagh) that his wife Desdemona (Irène Jacob) is engaged in an affair with his close friend. While the filmmaking lacks spice, it remains a stage for Fishburne to display his talent as a commanding and smoldering lead.
26. Scotland, PA
Year: 2001
Director: Billy Morrisette
Macbeth becomes McDonalds in Billy Morrisette's black comedy crime satire flick - Scotland, PA. The movie ingeniously retells William Shakespeare's Macbeth, now set inside a fast food joint in 1970s Scotland, Pennsylvania. James LeGros plays Joe "Mac" McBeth, who is informed by three hippie fortune tellers he just might finally be promoted to manager soon. He is then pressured into action by his scheming wife, Pat (Maura Tierney), only to be thwarted by the cop McDuff (Christopher Walken). Scotland, PA is an understated gem that, despite its pale imitation of the Coen Brothers' style of filmmaking, still orders up something fresh.
25. Hamlet
Year: 1990
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Years after Franco Zeffirelli's two definitive movies based on Shakespeare's plays – The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Romeo and Juliet (1968) – Zeffirelli came back to the Bard with his 1990 movie Hamlet. Mel Gibson takes the lead in Zeffirelli's film, playing the grieving prince while his mother, Queen Gertrude (Glenn Close), enjoys marriage to his father's killer, Claudius (Alan Bates). Compared to other Shakespeare movies, Zeffirelli's film is a straightforward rendition with its abridged storytelling balanced out by a period-appropriate setting of medieval Denmark. Gibson is an adequate Hamlet, too, imbuing the role with an action hero's masculinity, which few actors playing the character do. (Zeffirelli chose Gibson to play the part after watching Lethal Weapon.) It isn't the sexiest or spiciest Shakespeare film, but it's a sturdy picture that won't bore a classroom.
24. The Merchant of Venice
Year: 2004
Director: Michael Radford
In the first-ever movie adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, director Michael Radford takes a unique approach that gives the villain Shylock (played by Al Pacino) more depth than he is usually afforded. The result isn't a romantic comedy like Shakespeare wrote it, but a historical drama concerned with injustice. In interviews, Radford believed Shylock was the first tragic hero in Shakespeare's canon and not simply a villain who gets his comeuppance. This is reflected in Pacino's performance, which contributes to Radford's sympathetic vision by imbuing the role with sorrow rather than flat rage. Despite everyone's best efforts, the movie doesn't sidestep all of the play's rampant antisemitism. But Radford's vision emphasizes the more dramatic elements of Shakespeare's story to be a movie coursing with warm blood and a beating heart.
23. O
Year: 2001
Director: Tim Blake Nelson
In the discomforting atmosphere of Columbine and other school shootings came the movie O. Directed by Tim Blake Nelson and written by Brad Kaaya, this striking film is based on Kaaya's own experiences as a Black teenager attending mostly white high schools. Using Shakespeare's Othello as a foundation, O follows a star basketball player (Mekhi Phifer) – the only Black student at his elite American high school – who is deceived by his jealous best friend (Josh Hartnett) that his girlfriend (Julia Stiles) is cheating on him. O isn't the first movie to cast a Black actor as Othello – a more faithful 1995 film starred Laurence Fishburne – but O's youth-minded interpretation proves the Bard's stories are as timeless as they are adaptable. O is uniquely steeped in a familiar world that students trying to wrap their heads around Shakespeare can actually relate to.
22. She's the Man
Year: 2006
Director: Andy Fickman
With Shakespeare's Twelfth Night as an obvious basis, Andy Fickman's movie, She's the Man, follows a teenager named Viola (a revelatory Amanda Bynes) who poses as her twin brother in order to play for his boarding school's soccer team. Chaotic love triangles ensue, with future star Channing Tatum as the captain of the soccer team and love interest Duke Orsino. Although free from Shakespeare's iambic pentameter dialogue and placed comfortably in a modern setting – with cheerleaders, flip phones, and a pop-punk soundtrack – the film still lives up to the original play's traditions of romantic mischief and comical innuendo. Since its release in 2006, She's the Man has amassed a cult following of millennials who likely had it on repeat instead of doing their actual English homework.
21. Romeo Must Die
Year: 2000
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
What do you get when Shakespeare mixes it up with Jet Li and Aaliyah? The answer is Romeo Must Die, a star-crossed romance and kung fu action flick rolled into one. Loosely based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the movie follows feuding Black and Chinese gangs who vie for control in modern-day Oakland. Jet Li plays a Hong Kong prisoner who flees to America to investigate the murder of his brother, only to fall for beautiful Trish (Aaliyah), the daughter of a rival crime family. Despite its frustrating ending where Li and Aaliyah don't kiss (a result of test audiences reacting negatively), Romeo Must Die is a hard-hitting spin on a familiar story with a refreshing interracial romance of a kind rarely seen in Hollywood. And if you can't get enough of them, check out Jet Li wooing Aaliyah in the "Try Again" music video.
20. As You Like It
Year: 2006
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh is a filmmaker synonymous with Shakespeare, but even the least engrossing of his efforts, 2006's As You Like It, is a cut above the rest. An adaptation of Shakespeare's breezy romance about a young woman named Rosalind who disguises herself as a man but still catches the attention of strapping Orlando, Branagh's film version retells the story, setting the action in a European colony in 19th-century Japan during the Meiji Restoration. As You Like It is a star-studded affair (with Bryce Dallas Howard, Ramola Garai, Kevin Kline, Alfred Molina, and David Oyelowo among the cast) that brims with life and color while being breezy as a cherry blossom tree.
19. Grand Theft Hamlet
Year: 2024
Director(s): Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls
To troll, or not to troll – that was the question probably asked by those in the documentary Grand Theft Hamlet. Directed by and starring Sam Crane, with documentarian Pinny Grylls as co-director, Grand Theft Hamlet chronicles Crane's sincere efforts to put on a live production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet inside Grand Theft Auto Online during Covid-19 lockdowns. An example of Machinima filmmaking, Grand Theft Hamlet, exists in the tradition of all "putting on a show" stories, only this time, it's the spontaneity and casual cruelty of others in the game that stand in the way of the show going on. An unexpected meditation on making art by any means or tools possible, Grand Theft Hamlet earns a five-star wanted rating.
18. Much Ado About Nothing
Year: 2012
Director: Joss Whedon
Most people who get the stressful job of directing one of the best superhero movies, such as The Avengers, might spend their vacation in, say, Tahiti. Just days full of leisure and long naps. But Joss Whedon is not most people. During a break from the editing phase of The Avengers, Whedon got his closest friends together and performed Shakespeare in his actual home. This became his secret 2012 movie Much Ado About Nothing, a sexy black and white indie that sees the events of Shakespeare's comedy play out in the intimate space of Whedon's Santa Monica home. A timeless comedy with the warmth of a home movie, Much Ado About Nothing is a giddy thing.
17. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Year: 1990
Director: Tom Stoppard
Playwright Tom Stoppard, in his only work as a film director, brings his 1966 play to the screen in 1990's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Essentially a retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet from the point-of-view from its two biggest side characters, Stoppard's movie stars Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as Hamlet's closest friends who are clueless observers of the rotten state of Denmark. But unlike Hamlet, they are unable to actually do anything about it. A surrealist comedy, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead upholds Shakespeare's trademark motif of plays-within-plays while spinning a totally different yarn of its own.
16. Henry V
Year: 1944
Director: Laurence Olivier
With eye-popping Technicolor cinematography and a unique framing device that ushers audiences into the Globe Theater before immersing them into the story itself, Laurence Olivier's 1944 epic Henry V wowed moviegoers both in the UK and in the US as a stirring drama about bravery against all odds. It also worked as pro-British propaganda at the tail end of World War 2. As detailed in his autobiography, Olivier was personally asked by the British Ministry of Information to make films to "enhance the British cause." "I don’t think we could have won the war without 'Once more, unto the breach' somewhere in our soldiers' hearts," Olivier said.
15. Titus
Year: 1999
Director: Julie Taymor
In one of Broadway director Julie Taymor's few dalliances into the world of cinema, her 1999 epic Titus is a strange creature, being a sweeping historical drama while coming across like a hazy hallucination. Anthony Hopkins plays Titus Andronicus, the title figure of Shakespeare's tragedy, a Roman general who falls from grace after a triumphant return home from war. Replete with anachronisms and bizarre dreamlike sequences, the mystifying Titus might be better celebrated if it were not so long. Still, as a warning against systemic corruption and a meditation on the neverending violence of man, Titus' cranked-up camp makes it a cult classic.
14. Macbeth
Year: 2015
Director: Justin Kurzel
Not since Akira Kurosawa has anyone made Macbeth such a bloody and brutal thing of beauty. With his 2015 epic Macbeth, director Justin Kurzel provides a panoramic seat to Macbeth's awful rise to power and swift downfall; a magnificent Michael Fassbender channels some of his Magneto energy into Shakespeare's most tragic figure. Kurzel's Macbeth is an especially masculine interpretation of Shakespeare's darkest play, full of haunted imagery composed like a fine Baroque painting. If you've got a teenager struggling to understand the material, show them Kurzel's movie and watch them light up over a flick with unavoidable Dark Souls vibes.
13. Ran
Year: 1985
Director: Akira Kurosawa
While Akira Kurosawa initially set out to make a movie inspired by real-life Sengoku era warlord Mōri Motonari, it was fate that Motonari's life and family dynamics had echoes of Shakespeare's King Lear. That's when Kurosawa's project ultimately became Ran, his third movie based on Shakespeare after Throne of Blood (1957) and The Bad Sleep Well (1960). A sweeping samurai epic in vivid color, Ran tells of an aging warlord who divides his kingdom among his three sons, which leads to betrayal and ruin. As he did with Throne of Blood, Kurosawa masterfully marries Shakespeare's themes of power and chaos with Japanese Noh theater and a historical setting tailor-made for stories about dynasties in disarray.
12. Much Ado About Nothing
Year: 1993
Director: Kenneth Branagh
If you ever need to escape to the sun-drenched Mediterranean, pop in Kenneth Branagh's delectable Much Ado About Nothing from 1993. This star-studded affair brings a host of Hollywood A-listers – including Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves, Emma Thompson, and Kate Beckinsale – and drops them in a vibrant Tuscany summer where love is in the air. Lush vineyards and rolling hills provide a picturesque backdrop for a breezy romantic comedy where two couples find each other despite the treachery and trickery that almost tear them apart. If life has you feeling down, get yourself a negroni and press play, and you'll sigh no more.
11. The Lion King
Year: 1994
Director(s): Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff
From the kingdom of Denmark to the kingdom of the African savannah, Disney's majestic animated classic The Lion King boasts plenty of intentional echoes of Shakespeare's plays like King Lear and Hamlet. (During pre-production and amid script rewrites, co-director Roger Allers was told by producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to "put in as much Hamlet as you can," according to the 2003 book Makin' Toons by Allan Neuwirth.) Its story about a young lion, Simba, whose father is killed by his uncle Scar and returns years later to claim his place at the head of Pride Rock, is very obviously a Hamlet analog. However, Hamlet didn't have nearly as many karaoke bangers.
10. Chimes at Midnight
Year: 1965
Director: Orson Welles
Orson Welles' affinity towards the Shakespeare character Sir John Falstaff, a recurring presence across several of the Bard's plays, resulted in a movie that Welles considered to be his actual best work: Chimes at Midnight. A chopped-up mish-mash of several Shakespearean works, including Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Chimes at Midnight sees Keith Baxter as Prince Hal, heir to the throne of England, who must choose between upholding his duty as the next king or stay loyal to his carousing father-figure friend Falstaff (Welles). It took time for Chimes at Midnight to win widespread appreciation, but it now reigns supreme as one of the finest – and yes, original – Shakespeare movies ever made.
9. Romeo and Juliet
Year: 1968
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Its eternal presence in high school classrooms everywhere makes it hard to see Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet as the revelation it was in 1968. When Shakespeare productions regularly cast painfully obvious adults as the title teenagers, Zeffirelli actually cast 17-year-old Leonard Whiting and 16-year-old Olivia Hussey to play Romeo and Juliet, respectively. With additional tweaks and choices that played to both Whiting and Hussey's unique strengths as actors, audiences, at last, saw the doomed lovers as the young and foolish kids they've always been. Zeffireelli's movie drew critical acclaim and still endures as one of the defining Shakespeare movies ever made, outdone only by films that have taken more daring swings.
8. West Side Story
Year: 1961
Director(s): Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins
Shakespeare wouldn't know a jet or a shark if it hit him in the face. But the smash hit movie musical West Side Story, a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet set against racially tense 1950s New York City, is easily one of the finest "Shakespeare movies" ever made. Sprung from the stage musical by Jerome Robbins (with music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim), the 1961 film version is a lively, high-energy tale of a forbidden romance between white street gang member Tony (Richard Beymer) and Puerto Rican rival Maria (Natalie Wood). A triumph in every sense of the word, West Side Story really rumbles.
7. Henry V
Year: 1989
Director: Kenneth Branagh
In 1989, Kenneth Branagh made his filmmaking debut and immediately knocked it out of the park with a movie widely considered one of the greatest Shakespeare adaptations of all time. Henry V stars Branagh (who also writes and directs) as King Henry V, who seeks to assert his right to rule France with a fierce army standing in his way. Simmering with political ambition and face-in-the-mud brutality, Branagh's Henry V is the closest thing to knowing what Shakespeare would have made himself if given the Game of Thrones Blu-ray box set. Watch Branagh as King Henry, and it's no wonder why the director has cultivated his reputation as one of Hollywood's eminent experts on the Bard, bringing new life to a role and story centuries old.
6. Shakespeare in Love
Year: 1998
Director: John Madden
Its unpopular and controversial Oscar win aside, Shakespeare in Love is an inventive Hollywood romance that looks beyond the writings of Shakespeare to wonder about the man himself. Set in 1593 London, the movie follows William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), whose suffocating writer's block comes to an end when he falls head over heels for Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), who inspires him like no ordinary muse. Sexy and sincere, Shakespeare in Love toys with the Bard's works to suggest that all we're looking for are already around us. All the world's a stage, after all.
5. 10 Things I Hate About You
Year: 1999
Director: Gil Junger
William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew gets a contemporary update in Gil Junger's teen rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You. While not a one-for-one retelling of the play, the movie nevertheless follows two suburban Seattle sisters, Kat (Julia Stiles) and Bianca (Larisa Oleynik), with the latter unable to date until her acerbic, unlikable older sister does so first. In comes bad boy Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), who gets wrapped up into dating Kat for financial reasons, only to realize that love doesn't cost a thing. A generation-defining classic, 10 Things I Hate About You works as both a witty Shakespeare homage and a modern teenage romance.
4. Romeo + Juliet
Year: 1996
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Shakespeare scholars know that the Bard's plays were written for common folk, making it the closest thing to trashy reality TV and pro wrestling for a 1590s audience. Fast forward to 1996, and Baz Luhrmann makes Shakespeare's "low culture" explicit with his high-saturated camp retelling of Shakespeare's greatest romance, Romeo + Juliet. (The "+" is important.) Transporting the story to Venice Beach, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the doomed lovers who come from rival business families. Though the dialogue remains mostly intact, the rest of the movie is Shakespeare, unlike you've seen it before, even with the abundance of "modernized" remakes out there. It just doesn't get any better or more clever than a news anchor giving the play's opening prologue and a glorious close-up of a handgun etched with "Sword 9mm Series S."
3. The Tragedy of Macbeth
Year: 2021
Director: Joel Cohen
In the first movie where director Joel Coen works solo (without his brother Ethan Coen), Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand put on an acting clinic in Joel Coen's black and white opus The Tragedy of Macbeth. With strict faithfulness to the dialogue, Coen runs wild with the material to put on a work that feels otherworldly, like an unearthed piece of film forgotten from the era of German expressionism. Washington, a trained Shakespeare thespian, makes a case for himself as one of the greatest Shakespeare actors ever in Hollywood, playing Macbeth as a paranoid man desperate to cling to his glory even as the hour draws towards its end.
2. Throne of Blood
Year: 1957
Director: Akira Kurosawa
The haunted tragedy of Macbeth becomes a bewitching, fog-filled nightmare where power comes easy, but the strength to hold onto it costs everything. Akira Kurosawa's cinematic masterpiece Throne of Blood, released in 1957, reinterprets Macbeth as a piece of gothic samurai horror, where a feral Toshiro Mifune learns of his royal future from a sinister spirit in the forest. The first of Kurosawa's Shakespearean adaptations, Throne of Blood, fuses Shakespeare's storytelling with Noh theater to inspire awe and fear. The climax, where Toshiro Mifune is besieged by a hailstorm of arrows, is terrifying, not the least of which is because real arrows were being fired at him at the time.
1. Hamlet
Year: 1996
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Is Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film version of Hamlet the greatest Shakespeare movie ever made? This be madness, yet there is method in't. With a matured and assured Branagh at the helm – as actor, writer, and director – Shakespeare's most celebrated tragedy makes it to the screen completely unabridged. (Never mind its "new" 19th century setting.) A sprawling and majestic adaptation with a mind-boggling huge cast, the movie feels as though Shakespeare wrote it just for Branagh to film it. We could go on about how great Hamlet is. But what's the point of all these words, words, words, when the work speaks for itself?
