Did you know Hamlet was a youngster? The Melancholy Dane was a student in Shakespeare’s play, and in 1600 they weren’t doing so much of the continuing education. So Emile Hirsch as Hamlet… hey, that’s actually sort of age-appropriate.
Hirsch will be playing Hamlet in a new movie version of the classic, this time updated for the modern day. The film will be reuniting him with his Lords of Dogtown director (and Twilight pariah) Catherine Hardwicke.
Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, who worked with Hirsch on Milk, are producing. “This project was the brainchild of Emile Hirsch, who we had the pleasure of working with on ‘Milk.’ Hamlet was in college when the story takes place, yet there hasn’t been a movie version with an appropriately-aged actor playing the role. Our goal is to present the story as a suspense thriller. We want to make it exciting and accessible for an audience today,” Jinks and Cohen said in a joint statement.
A suspense thriller? I guess you can pull that off in the modern day when most of the kids haven’t heard of Shakespeare, let alone read (or seen) Hamlet. What Jinks and Cohen don’t mention, though, is their early thoughts on retitling the film: The Emo Prince.
Or maybe The Randy Prince. Says Hardwicke: “I had a great time working with Emile on ‘Lords of Dogtown,’ so when he suggested ‘Hamlet,’ I was intrigued. We read the play aloud and when I heard Emile speaking Shakespeare’s amazing words, I was flooded with images. We edited the play tightly, making the words extremely accessible. In our version, we’re working hard to make ‘Hamlet’ a thrilling cinematic experience — the violent, intense, and romantic scenes that happen ‘off-stage’ in the play will be shown in vivid detail.”