The Best Shakespeare Film Adaptations

Ranker Film
Updated August 27, 2021 4.2k votes 626 voters
List Rules
Movies based on or adapted from the plays of William Shakespeare using the original text - no modernized versions.

List of the best Shakespeare film adaptations. There is no single human being in the history of entertainment who has spawned more adaptations than William Shakespeare. This list compiles the absolute greatest big screen adaptations of original Shakespeare works. His plays now live on in these major motion pictures, and are ranked by on this list by the community in order of excellence.

Romeo and Juliet began as a tragic play that may have first been published as early as the 1590s. 400 years later, in the 1990s, Baz Luhrmann came adapted the Shakespearean story for his film, Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles. Kenneth Branagh has also made more movie adaptations of William Shakespeare plays than just about anyone else between Hamlet, Henry V, and Much Ado About Nothing. The famous Shakespeare drama "Othello" has also been transformed into numerous film adaptations, most notably Tim Blake Nelson's O.

Vote up your favorite Shakespearean adaptation below or add the Shakespeare-based films and movies you love that aren't already on the list.

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