Juliet & Romeo

'Juliet & Romeo' keeps Shakespeare's Verona, sets it in 1301 and turns the tragedy into a pop musical with original songs. Writer and director Timothy Scott Bogart had staged 'Romeo and Juliet' four times without ever feeling he'd cracked it. The missing piece came from his brother, songwriter Evan Kidd Bogart, one of the writers behind 'Halo' for Beyoncé and 'SOS' for Rihanna: if iambic pentameter was the poetry of Shakespeare's day, pop music is the poetry of ours. The title puts Juliet's name first, and she's far less passive here than in the play.

Italy isn't a country yet, the Pope wants Verona for himself, and the Montagues and Capulets are both jockeying for position while Prince Escalus tries to end their feud for good. Juliet comes home to find that her mother, Lady Capulet, has already arranged her marriage to Paris. Romeo, meanwhile, is the Montague son who'd rather avoid a fight with the other family.

Once they meet, the story follows the road everyone knows, secret wedding and all, with a few additions of its own. Bogart gives more room to Rosaline and Mercutio and invents a new subplot for the apothecary, who brews potions that can make someone pass for dead for a while, to Friar Laurence's bewilderment. Most of the dialogue is Bogart's, and only a few of Shakespeare's lines survive.

Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward play the lovers, with Jason Isaacs, Rebel Wilson and Rupert Everett as the parents, Derek Jacobi as the Friar, Dan Fogler as the apothecary and Rupert Graves as Escalus. It was shot in Italy in early 2023, in Verona, at Torrechiara castle and in Castell'Arquato, with Dante Ferretti as production designer. Bogart started shooting the same month he released 'Spinning Gold', about his father, the founder of Casablanca Records, and then the Hollywood strikes left the finished film on the shelf for more than a year.

It opened in American cinemas on 9 May 2025 and flopped badly, taking $289,489 across 1,350 screens on its first weekend and around $550,000 worldwide. British and Irish audiences got it in June. Critics were harsh about songs that hardly anyone remembered on the way out, though Rugaard and Ward's chemistry won a little praise.

• Drama
• Romance
• Music