Romeo and Juliet is usually everyone's first taste of Shakespeare. I remember the first time I read the play and watched the 1968 version of the film in High School. At nearly the same time, Baz Luhrmann's, Romeo + Juliet was released. I think it's safe to suppose that most younger people have seen the new, stylized version starring Leonardo DiCaprio before reading the original play itself.

Well, it seems as though the time has come for a new, traditional film version of the play to be released. Julian Fellowes has written a screenplay, simply titled Romeo and Juliet, that is being directed by Carlo Carlei. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Juliet, Douglas Booth as Romeo, Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Benvolio and Ed Westwick as Tybalt. Damian Lewis (Lord Capulet) has recently been cast, as well as Natascha McElhone (Lady Capulet), Stellan Skarsgard (Prince of Verona), Lesley Manville (The Nurse), Christian Cooke (Mercutio), Tomas Arana (Lord Montague), Laura Morante (Lady Montague) and Leon Vitali (Apothecary).

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Fellowes said:

“We felt that it had been quite a long time since there had been a romantic, traditional rendition of the piece...people have made Romeo since then — and some very good ones — but they were set in modern Ohio or whatever. This isn’t that. This is the romantic medieval love story as conceived by Shakespeare. We felt that really what we needed was just to make it slightly more accessible to today’s generation. That, I hope, is all we’ve done. My dream would be that you watch it and you think you’ve watched the whole thing written by Shakespeare.”

Who knows how the younger generation will respond to this new film version, but I know there will be a lot of filmgoers exited to see a new presentation of an old, classic play by Shakespeare.