With a mid-August shooting date staring him in the face, Hamlet director Michael Almereyda is busy recruiting people to star in his latest Shakespeare adaptation, Cymbeline. One of the main characters in the film will be King Cymbeline, and Almereyda has Ed Harris set for the role{
Harris joins Almereyda’s Hamlet collaborator Ethan Hawke in adapting Shakespeare’s play about a princess who disobeys her father’s wishes and marries beneath herself, which sparks a chain of exiling, seduction, disguises and deception.
Almereyda’s version takes the Baz Luhrmann’s **Romeo + Juliet **route and updates the plot to a tale of dirty cops and drug-dealing bikers in 21st century America. We’re guessing Cymbeline won’t be an actual king, but more likely the leader of a gang.
The cameras are set to roll on August 19 in New York, with money from the producers behind 12 Years A Slave and Margin Call. Harris, who was last seen in Pain & Gain, has indie comedy romance The Face Of Love and crime drama Frontera working their way through post-production. We’re mostly intrigued to see him in Snowpiercer, though there’s no sign of a UK release for the dystopian future drama thriller just yet.