Shakespeare’s teen tragedy is a tale as old as time — but some adaptations tell it better than others.

15 notable Romeo and Juliet movies, ranked

Shakespeare's teen tragedy is a tale as old as time — but some adaptations tell it better than others.

By Mary Sollosi

Mary Sollosi

Mary Sollosi is the former assistant features editor at **. She left EW in 2022.

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and Kevin Jacobsen

May 5, 2026 9:00 a.m. ET

Natalie Wood as Maria and Richard Beymer as Tony in 'West Side Story'; Claire Danes as Juliet Capulet and Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague in 'Romeo + Juliet'; Leonard Whiting as Romeo Montague and Olivia Hussey as Juliet Capulet in 'Romeo and Juliet'. Credit:

Donaldson Collection/Getty; Merrick Morton; Bettmann/Getty

Wherefore art thou, Romeo and Juliet? Well, you don't have to look far: The star-crossed lovers from William Shakespeare's classic tragedy appear repeatedly throughout film history. From straightforward adaptations like George Cukor's 1936 version and Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 drama, to Oscar-winning takes on the story, such as *West Side Story* (1961) and *Shakespeare in Love* (1998), *Romeo and Juliet* has been a constant source of inspiration for filmmakers.

One of the more creative interpretations of Shakespeare's tragedy is Baz Luhrmann's *Romeo + Juliet* (1996), a modern-day remix starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes that uses the Bard’s original text. Not every adaptation gets the two feuding households right, though, so we’re ranking the most notable *Romeo and Juliet* films over the years — and explaining why some are more alike in dignity than others.

Juliet & Romeo (2025)

Clara Rugaard as Juliet and Jamie Ward as Romeo in 'Juliet & Romeo'.

Briarcliff Entertainment/Courtesy Everett

At best, we admire the gumption to update *Romeo and Juliet* for a modern audience while still setting it in the early 14th century. In execution, however, Timothy Scott Bogart's musical adaptation fails on most counts to achieve the swoony, tragic heights of its source material. The film eschews Shakespeare's prose for flat, contemporary dialogue and discount *Greatest Showman* musical numbers, while its leads read as so modern they can hardly be believed as living in 1301 Verona. —*Kevin Jacobsen***

Tromeo & Juliet (1997)

Will Keenan as Tromeo Que and Jane Jensen as Juliet Capulet in 'Tromeo and Juliet'.

Troma Entertainment

To say that *Tromeo & Juliet* is in poor taste is an understatement of Shakespearean proportions. The work of Troma Entertainment, this only moderately original, no-budget Elizabethan-inflected film from newbie screenwriter James Gunn (yes, *that* James Gunn) gets some points for smartly incorporating the original text at key moments ("She doth teach the torches to burn bright"; "Parting is such sweet sorrow") and for casting Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead as the Chorus, but loses all of them with the revelation that — spoiler alert! — Romeo and Juliet are brother and sister, among other disgusting new additions. —*Mary Sollosi*

Love Is All There Is (1996)

Angelina Jolie as Gina Malacici, Lainie Kazan as Sadie Capomezzo, and Joseph Bologna as Mike Capomezzo in 'Love Is All There Is'.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty

This unforgivably bad rom-com moves the lovers to the Bronx in the '90s, where the children of rival Italian caterers star in their local church's production of *Romeo and Juliet* and fall for each other while under the spell of Shakespeare's play. We can give the married codirectors, Joseph Bologna and *The Nanny*'s Renée Taylor, a little bit of credit for acknowledging the great power of the Bard's poetry, but absolutely none for the fact that every single punchline is a tired cliché about Italian Americans and/or horny teenagers. The film is notable primarily because its Juliet — called Gina here, and with a bad Italian accent and no apparent personality — is played by none other than a 21-year-old Angelina Jolie. —*M.S.*

Romeo Must Die (2000)

Jet Li as Han Sing and Aaliyah as Trish O'Day in 'Romeo Must Die'.

Warner Bros./Getty

Of all the star-crossed movie lovers on this list, including the animated gnomes (more on them later), Jet Li and Aaliyah win the award for having the least chemistry. Andrzej Bartkowiak's action thriller *Romeo Must Die* pairs them up almost as an afterthought to its convoluted gang-war plot, into which Han Sing (Li) and Trish O'Day (Aaliyah) are thrown when they each lose a saintly brother to the other's father's evil henchman. Aaliyah is appealing on her own, and Li's better action sequences are jaw-dropping, but the movie is shallow and dull, and the neon X-ray effect that Bartkowiak employs whenever someone is brutally murdered is early-2000s moviemaking at its worst. —*M.S.*

Romeo & Juliet (2013)

Douglas Booth as Romeo Montague and Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet Capulet in 'Romeo & Juliet'. Relativity Media

Carlo Carlei's beautiful incarnation of the tale is shot on location in Italy, with gorgeous costumes and an appealing young cast led by Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth. Delightful as it may be to look at, though, listening is a different thing entirely: Carlei and screenwriter Julian Fellowes (of *Downton Abbey* fame) committed a blasphemy worse than any of the lovers' idol worship-themed flirtations when they decided to make a straightforward Renaissance adaptation...with horrible, dumbed-down, semi-Shakespearean dialogue. There are a million ways to stage the Bard *around* the brilliant original text and offer a genuinely original interpretation. The only new spin this *R&J* puts on its source material is to assume its audience's illiteracy. —*M.S.*

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)

Juliet (voice: Emily Blunt) and Gnomeo (voice: James McAvoy) in 'Gnomeo & Juliet'.

Touchstone Pictures

Kelly Asbury's animated version of *Romeo and Juliet* unfolds in two neighboring gardens. The gardens' gnomes, identified by their hats as blues and reds, have a deep hatred of each other, for which their primary release is through highly competitive lawnmower races, naturally. The amazing voice cast includes James McAvoy and Emily Blunt as Gnomeo and Juliet, respectively; Michael Caine as Juliet's father; Maggie Smith as Gnomeo's mother; and Jason Statham as Tybalt. Patrick Stewart plays a statue of William Shakespeare, whom Romeo encounters in a park in one of the film's many oddly placed nods to its source material. *Gnomeo & Juliet *has its charms, but sticks to the script perhaps too much to feel like it works on its own. —*M.S.*

The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998)

Kiara (voice: Neve Campbell) and Kovu (voice: Jason Marsden) in 'The Lion King II: Simba's Pride'.

After drawing inspiration from *Hamlet* for *The Lion King* (1994), Disney returned to the Shakespeare well by loosely adapting *Romeo and Juliet* for its direct-to-video sequel. *Simba's Pride* finds Kala (Neve Campbell), Simba and Nala's daughter, striking up a connection with Kovu (Jason Marsden), a member of Scar's exiled outsiders. While Simba is suspicious and Kovu's mother plans to use the young lions' budding relationship for ulterior motives, Kala and Kovu's bond only grows stronger. The sequel doesn't have the enduring bangers of the original film, but it's an effective kid-friendly version of Shakespeare's tragedy — with a much more hopeful ending. —*K.J.*

Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Leslie Howard as Romeo Montague and Norma Shearer as Juliet Capulet in 'Romeo and Juliet'.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty

Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer play the star-crossed lovers in George Cukor's 1936 black-and-white affair, which had the good sense to use Tchaikovsky's iconic ballet score and the bad sense to dress its players in some truly heinous costumes. The straightforward adaptation's real failure, however, lies in its casting. Howard and Shearer are obviously great actors (the latter earned an Oscar nomination for her performance), and confident with the language, but they were also both more than twice the proper age of their respective roles. The lovers' youth is as essential to *Romeo and Juliet* as their families' quarrel, and it's hard to really get on board with this fortysomething man and thirtysomething woman falling all over themselves for each other like a pair of googly-eyed teenagers. Grown adults would never be — for lack of a better word — so childish. —*M.S.*

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Private Romeo (2011)

Seth Numrich as Sam Singleton and Matt Doyle as Glenn Mangan in 'Private Romeo'.

Wolfe Releasing/Courtesy Everett Collection

A military academy is where we lay our scene for this adaptation, which nods at the Renaissance tradition of having all-male ensembles (and gives life once again to Shakespeare's many hidden jokes about it) — though none of the actors here are playing women. Alan Brown's 2011 indie begins with its students reading Shakespeare's play in English class, then finding themselves living it out — using the original text almost exclusively — in their lives when two of the young men at the academy (stage actors Seth Numrich and Matt Doyle in the Romeo and Juliet roles, respectively) fall in love. Though the plot begins to show some strain from the transposition as the script races toward its tragic conclusion (which is not fulfilled here), the repositioning of the conflict from familial rivalry to homophobic tension makes *Private Romeo* a compelling reinterpretation. —*M.S.*

Warm Bodies (2013)

Teresa Palmer as Julie and Nicholas Hoult as R in 'Warm Bodies'.

What's in a name? In Jonathan Levine's comedic zombie apocalypse take on the tale, our hero (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie who calls himself "R" because that's all he can remember of his name as a human. When he falls in love with a human girl, Julie (Teresa Palmer), after killing her boyfriend, Perry (Dave Franco), his humanity begins to return to him. It's an effective, if not especially faithful or profound, approach to the story, and R's struggle to speak anything more than grunts, combined with the running joke of the mystery of his true name, cleverly nod to Shakespeare's characters' fixation with words and what they mean, as well as their tragic failure to communicate. Luckily, just because *Warm Bodies* takes place during the zombie apocalypse doesn't mean that it has to end so badly. —*M.S.*

West Side Story (2021)

Ansel Elgort as Tony and Rachel Zegler as Maria in 'West Side Story'. Niko Tavernise/20th Century Studios

Steven Spielberg's first movie musical served as the second major adaptation of *West Side Story*, the Tony-winning Broadway musical that transports Shakespeare's classic tale to 1950s New York. Rival gangs — the Jets and the Sharks — are embroiled in a bitter turf war, and former Jet Tony (Ansel Elgort) romances the Sharks' leader's sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), from the bottom of a fire escape. While the 2021 version hews closer to the stage show than the 1961 film adaptation (which appears later on this list), Elgort's performance as Tony leaves a bit to be desired, and the choreography doesn't quite match Jerome Robbins' vibrant work in the first film. Still, its authentic casting and more grounded approach to the story serve to deepen its themes of doomed lovers. —*K.J.***

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Claire Danes as Juliet Capulet and Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague in 'Romeo + Juliet'.

The year before *Titanic *(1997), Leonardo DiCaprio began his path to full-blown heartthrob status when he played Romeo (opposite Claire Danes' Juliet) in Baz Luhrmann's version of Shakespeare's great romance. The kinetic adaptation retains the original dialogue but sets the action in "Verona Beach" in a hyper-stylized present day, and, like the director's take on *The Great Gatsby* (2013), his *R+J* can veer into self-indulgent territory. It only makes sense that this timeless story should be aimed at contemporary teenagers, though, and Luhrmann's music video version succeeds, where so many sluggishly reverent period pieces have failed, in Making Shakespeare Sexy Again — an accomplishment due more to its captivating lead actors than its frantic editing or flashy mise-en-scène. —*M.S.*

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Joseph Fiennes as William Shakespeare and Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps in 'Shakespeare in Love'. Miramax

John Madden's swoonily romantic Best Picture winner *Shakespeare in Love* dramatizes the writing of *Romeo and Juliet,* rather than adapting the play itself, but intertwines the two narratives so deftly that we consider it an adaptation in its own right — and a wonderfully witty and original one at that. When William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) has terrible writer's block and owes his theater a play, he finds his muse in the beautiful Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a noblewoman who dreams of being onstage.

The script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, the latter of whom had previously reimagined Shakespeare’s *Hamlet* through the eyes of two doomed supporting characters with *Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead*, cleverly works in countless references to and devices from Shakespeare's plays, and incorporates much of the original text of *Romeo and Juliet* through the actors' rehearsals, which is performed as well as it is in any full-blown adaptation. It's not straight Shakespeare, but it's probably the most affectionate movie on this list — with a perfectly sad, sweet, and non-double-suicide ending. —*M.S.*

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Leonard Whiting as Romeo Montague and Olivia Hussey as Juliet Capulet in 'Romeo and Juliet'. Bettmann Archive

Of all the straightforward *Romeo and Juliet* adaptations, Franco Zeffirelli's Best Picture-nominated incarnation is the one that doth teach the torches to burn bright. Shot on locations in Italy in brilliant Technicolor, with stunning costumes and compelling young leads, the movie is almost unfathomably beautiful. Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey were both unknowns when they starred as Romeo and Juliet, and though neither of them navigates the Shakespeare with the confidence of Laurence Olivier (who, it is worth noting, plays the unseen Chorus in the film), their very artlessness seems to carry their performances better than masterful technique or command of the material ever could. The other great star of the show here is Nino Rota's stirring love theme, a melody as piercing as the blade that poor Juliet takes to her heart. O happy dagger! —*M.S.*

West Side Story (1961)

Natalie Wood as Maria and Richard Beymer as Tony in 'West Side Story'.

Donaldson Collection/Getty

It speaks to the brilliance of Shakespeare that when we reimagine his plays in strange new places, they work all the better — and it speaks to the perfection of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' *West Side Story* that it beat out all these lush Renaissance retellings for the top spot among *Romeo and Juliet* movies.

While nobody speaks a word of Shakespeare, the movie has the next best thing in Stephen Sondheim, who earned one of his first major gigs writing the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's music. And while the young lovers are both sufficiently charming, it's George Chakiris' Bernardo (the Tybalt character) and Rita Moreno's Anita (the Nurse) who steal the show in Oscar-winning performances buoyed by some *killer* dancing. *West Side Story* may not be written in iambic pentameter, but its passion and sincerity get to the heart of *Romeo and Juliet* better than any other adaptation. —*M.S.*

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