Why are modern movies based on shakespeare?

Answer 1

Shakespeare's plays hold a special place in our culture: the stories and words are well-known to most people, because Shakespeare is the world's best known playwright, bar none. And also, of course, they are also extremely good plays on the whole--well-written, thought-provoking, exciting, and generally entertaining. So from the beginning of cinema, filmmakers have wanted to get some of that magic on the screen. The first Shakespeare movie was made in 1899, and there are always several new Shakespeare movies being made. Some of these, at least, follow Shakespeare's scripts closely in terms of plot and dialogue, using the Bard's words with little or no additions. Others which claim to be "Shakespeare movies" are totally new scripts whose plots bear a relationship, sometimes quite vague, to those of Shakespeare's plays. Generally these films are trying to cash in on an association, however distant, with something by Shakespeare (the Lion King is the most blatant example of this). The fact that filmmakers will stretch a point to try to associate their films with Shakespeare illustrates the fact that Shakespeare's name sells due to his immense popularity.