Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Why so many Shakespeare movies?

I was quite surprised when I looked up the answers for the trivia contest and there were so many Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet movies, plus lots from his other plays I'm sure. I started thinking about why there so many. I thought of two reasons:

He's free, as far as I know there's no copyright on his works. I don't see how there could be as it's been what, 400 years since he died. Therefore making a movie of one of his plays requires no rights to be paid, and no writer unless they wish to adapt the story.

The stories are fairly universal. Even people who have never read the plays usually know the basic stories and names of the characters of the most famous plays. Most of us were forced to read them in high school (that may work against them though).

Just think about how many cultural references there are based on Shakespeare, everything from the name Romeo signifying romance to the multiple references in The Simpsons and tons of other TV shows and movies..

2 comments:

Reel Fanatic said...

I think there's one more factor at work here ... These are obviously classis stories that make great films, but we see so many of them for the same reason we see so many sequels .. because Hollywood is virtually out of new ideas

Reel Fanatic said...

Beside from the fact that these are obviously stories that deserve to be told many stories, there's another factor at work here .. It's the same reason we see so mny sequels .. because Hollywood is virtually out of fresh ideas