The latest trailer for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead is available on UGO.

The film, which stars Jake Hoffman and Devon Aoki (Sin City, 2 Fast 2 Furious), is written and directed by Jordan Galland. Hoffman has the difficult task of emerging from the shadow cast by his larger than life father, Dustin Hoffman, who has been everything from a cross-dresser to a pirate, and even a father Focker. Coincidently, the film is being scored by Sean Lennon, son of the late John Lennon.

Jake Hoffman plays the unemployed Julian Marsh, who finds himself in the director’s seat for an adaptation of Hamlet that was actually written by a master vampire. As director of the production, Jake becomes caught in the middle of a 2,000 year-old conspiracy involving the Holy Grail and, as if things weren’t bad enough, he casts his ex-girlfriend, played by Aoki, in the role of Ophelia.


Dude, I told you the market is ripe for a Dead Presidents remake.

The horror-comedy is one of two films coming out this year that feature bizarre adaptations of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Andrew Flemming’s comedy Hamlet 2 hits theaters in August and, judging from the trailer, looks like it could be really funny. 

While Jordan Galland’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead will probably be lucky to appear on a quarter of the screens that will show Hamlet 2, the film has the indie-horror circuit buzzing. Although the two films are completely different stories, they continue the recent trend of two films with a similar premise being released in a relatively close time frame.

It all started in 1989 when Jim “I’m gonna bust that bitch so hard she bounces” Belushi got his shit stepped on by Tom Hanks. About three months after K-9 opened in theaters, the film was one-upped by both Turner AND Hooch.

It is no secret that films often come in pairs. Deep Impact gave those college-educated liberal elitists a thinking man’s alternative to Armageddon. Now, I didn’t catch Tommy Lee Jones or his striking British counterpart Pierce Brosnan in their respective disaster films, but I’m assuming Volcano and Dante’s Peak only differed in that one probably had a dog, or some other kind of pet, narrowly escape a molten lava river and the other one most likely had a sassy grandma with plenty of fight left in her. The list goes on and on– A Bug’s Life had Antz, Saving Private Ryan had The Thin Red Line, The Truman Show had EdTV, and the bitter rivalry between the five people who saw Mission to Mars and the three people who saw Red Planet still continues.

Sometimes the movies seem similar but are entirely different like in the case of The Illusionist and The Prestige, which were both enjoyable films. Tombstone was an action film and Wyatt Earp was a biopic that is, to this day, underrated and overshadowed by the flashier Kurt Russel film.

I just thought we’d never see the day where there were two “some guy puts on a weird adaptation of Hamlet” movies released in the same year.

For a list of upcoming screenings and other information on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, check out the official site.