Joss Whedon, who’s supposed to be directing The Avengers right now, recently announced the completion of a separate movie, a film adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing that he shot in secret. So I guess directing a huge-budget comic book movie isn’t that hard after all. I would have a witty joke for what a Whedon Shakespeare movie might look like all set to go, but I’ve never read that play or seen anything that Joss Whedon has ever done. So far I just have Hamlet farting on a skull while a dog covers its eyes with its paws. Am I close?

Joss Whedon has directed, adapted, cast and filmed an entire movie — an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” — in secret.
Whedon wrote and directed the movie. Actors include Sean Maher, who starred on Whedon’s “Firefly” and in his 2005 movie “Serenity;” Fran Kranz, who stars in “The Cabin in the Woods,” which Whedon wrote and is producing; “Castle,” “Firefly” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star Nathan Fillion and “Angel” and “Cabin” star Amy Acker. Spencer Treat Clark and Jillian Morgese, newcomers to Whedon’s projects, also star.
The play is a comedy about two sets of lovers. The fast-talking Benedick and Beatrice banter cynically while the sweet young Claudio and Hero are so in love they can barely speak. Benedick and Beatrice get tricked into proclaiming their love for eachother while Claudio is fooled into rejecting Hero at the altar. But the scheme is foiled and the two couples wed. [TheWrap]

And here’s the word from the film’s official site:

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Everyone knows Shakespeare plays are full of florid prose and human drama. But what if the director of Independence Day made a movie about Shakespeare? What this film presupposes is, what if there were sword fights and executions and the characters didn’t talk like fags? That’s more or less the story of Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, which recently released its second trailer (the first had cannon fights!).

“Since when did words ever win a kingdom?”

“…Leave that to me.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It’s like drama class Michael Bay! WE WILL DROP WORDSPLOSIONS ON THE EIFFEL TOWER OF PARCHMENT! Would a ‘Splosion by any other name still be totally sick, bro? Anyway, this looks awesome, but am I wrong for thinking that Roland Emmerich’s swordfights-and-explosions Shakespeare movie suddenly looks pretty tame in comparison to Paul WS Anderson’s 3D, Steampunk Three Musketeers movie with floating pirate ship cannon fights? You can’t fade floating cannon fights, Brobespierre, that’s science.

[ComingSoon]

FLAMING CANNON ARMORED SWORDFIGHT!

As the director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, 10,000 BC, and Godzilla, Roland Emmerich is to large-scale, CGI disasters what Michael Bay is to explosions and sassy black people.  When it was announced a few years ago that he’d be making a film about Shakespeare, we just assumed it’d be the most OOH WHA-AH AH-AHiest take on Shakespeare ever made. TO RUN OR NOT TO RUN??? (*meteor smashes Eiffel Tower*) RUN!

Today, Anonymous has a trailer, and it starts with narration which lifts almost word-for-word the tagline of Eli Cash’s fictional novel in The Royal Tenenbaums: “Everyone knows Shakespeare wrote hundreds of the most respected works in the English language, and they were all boring.  What this movie preSUPPOSES is… maybe they weren’t?”

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"Alas, poor Yorick, I just stomped your yard, homey."

There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just give it to you straight: Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke’s planned contemporary Shakespeare adaptation, Haml3t, is no longer happening.  It’s such a shame, I’ve always said that what the world really needs is more variations on Hamlet.

Here’s what we’re missing:

“It’s a modern-day film, set at a liberal-arts college where words matter [almost as much as Quidditch] — so people are careful and talk in beautiful language, and Hamlet tries to express himself through music,” Hardwicke explained.  “So, we’re using some of the cooler Shakespeare language, in a musical way. My Hamlet is like an aspiring rock star. He’s got six people that go to his performances, go to clubs and listen to him. It’s like an early Kurt Cobain.”

The idea is that Emile Hirsch’s take on the character will blend a unique mix of music, sincerity and Shakespearean prose to re-envision the 400-year-old character not as a vengeful prince, but as a credibility-sensitive indie musician attending a school like Berklee.

So yeah, that’s not happening anymore.  Such a shame, I couldn’t wait to see how the art school premise worked with the junior college dropout title (what’s the three for? is Three Six mafia writing the music?).  On the plus side, this does leave room for some of the contemporized Shakespeare adaptations I had planned.  Such as:

• Macb3th
• 3 M3rchants, 3 V3nice
• St3p Up 2 Tame the Shr3w 3D
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Traps Come Alive
• Much Ado 2: Electric Boogaloo
• As U Lik3 i+
• OtHELL0 #1 mUch <3 BiGdizzD$$HolLatchABoyee 1ago IZZA BeyoTcccH

Surprisingly, this headline does not refer to a clever mashup video.  Instead, Roland Emmerich, the director behind 2012, Independence Day, 10,000 BC, and The Day After Tomorrow, actually says he’s going to make a film about Shakespeare.  I expect shaking, and spears.

EMMERICH: [Called "Anonymous"] It’s about how it came to be that William Shakespeare was not the author of his plays.  It’s not [Christopher] Marlowe, it’s [Edward] de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.  It’s kind of like a political thriller.  It’s about who will succeed Elizabeth and the cause of that thriller, the Essex Rebellion, we take on, and we learn how the plays were written by somebody else. [Collider]

So basically, it’s only about Shakespeare insomuch as National Treasure was about Abraham Lincoln.  Which is good.  First, because people only care about Shakespeare when they’re trying to sound smart, and second because I’m not sure I could live in a world where Roland Emmerich directed human dramas.  In fact, while I was writing this post, I accidentally typed “Sharkespeare”.  That sounds way more like a Roland Emmerich movie.  OH MY GOD IT ATE THE GRAND CANYON!