Ever wish Romeo and Juliet would consist of a whole lot less brilliant Shakespeare dialogue and a lot more Zack Snyder-esque action sequences? No? Well, it's happening anyway.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony is picking up Verona, a new Romeo and Juliet retelling by Neil Widener and Gavin James. Verona is the name of the city where Romeo and Juliet is set. The new movie will apparently reimagine the classic story as a 300 style epic.
We don't know too much else about the movie yet, but it will be produced by Joe Roth, who is no stranger to retellings of classic stories. According to Slashfilm, he is currently producing Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Tim Burton's 2010 film, as well as The Huntsman, the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman. Some of his other films have included Oz the Great and Powerful and Maleficent.
This is certainly a different take on Romeo and Juliet than we've ever seen before. The Shakespeare play has been adapted to film and television literally dozens of times, with a recent notable example being Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. That one took another unique approach of modernizing the play and making it revolve around warring mafia families. We've never really seen an adaptation present the story as an action epic, but then again maybe that's better than seeing yet another retelling of the same story in the same exact way.
300 was directed by Zack Snyder and featured crazy, hyper stylized action sequences, many being shot in slow motion. Much of that movie's action revolved around huge battle sequences, which there aren't quite so many of in Romeo and Juliet, so who knows what Sony will be going for here.