Hamlet: 13 Movies Based on Shakespeare’s Greatest Tragedy

Filmmakers have been adapting the plays of William Shakespeare since the advent of cinema. The tale widely considered the Bard’s greatest work – The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark – was first adapted in 1900 as a one-minute film starring Sarah Bernhardt, followed by a 1907 short directed by Georges Méliès.

A slew of Hamlet adaptations have since followed, with the 1990s alone seeing four very different films inspired by the play, including one very popular movie featuring a singing lion.

The 21st century has so far beget seven different films based directly on or inspired by Hamlet, including last year’s Oscar-nominated Hamnet and this week’s release of Hamlet, starring Riz Ahmed in a South Asian riff on the tragedy.

Here then are 13 of the most notable Hamlet (or Hamlet-inspired) movies, starting with:

Hamlet (1948)

This moody classic is actor-director Laurence Olivier’s tour-de-force both in front of and behind the camera. Although a truncated adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, Olivier’s Hamlet remains the definitive screen rendition. He portrays the titular melancholy Danish prince torn by indecision over how to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle (and the uncle’s subsequent marriage to Hamlet’s mom).

The Bad Sleep Well

This black & white 1960 classic reteams director Akira Kurosawa with actor Toshiro Mifune, who gives a far more restrained, nuanced performance than he’s known for from his samurai classics. Ostensibly a revenge tale set against the backdrop of corporate corruption in post-war Japan, The Bad Sleep Well draws on Hamlet by having Mifune’s protagonist Nishi out to avenge the murder of his father by the Public Development Corporation’s Vice President Iwabuchi. Nishi has been playing the long game, getting closer to his target by marrying Iwabuchi’s daughter, but he ultimately hurts innocent people in his quest for revenge and to expose corruption.

Hamlet (1990)

Filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli – who burst onto the scene in the late 1960s with screen adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet – directed this medieval interpretation starring Mel Gibson as Hamlet and Glenn Close as his mother Gertrude (Close is just nine years older than Gibson!). Zeffirelli said at the time of production that he cast Gibson and Close because they were bankable stars (coming off the successes of Lethal Weapon and Fatal Attraction, respectively) who could bring in younger viewers. The cast included Alan Bates, Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, and Helena Bonham Carter.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

In his only outing as a film director, Tom Stoppard adapted his own play for this 1990 dark comedy starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the respective title characters. Here, these two supporting players in the original Hamlet are trying to find out why the Prince (played by a pre-Games of Thrones’ Iain Glen) has gone mad. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern interact with the main players and text of Hamlet but are also off in their own existentialist story that uses less flowery language. Richard Dreyfuss co-stars as the leader of a troupe of actors who Rosencrantz and Guildenstern encounter on their way to Elsinore Castle.

The Lion King

Disney’s 1994 blockbuster was inspired in part by Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Simba avenging the death of his father, Mufasa, at the hands of his uncle, Scar. (Jon Favreau directed a 2019 remake that brought back James Earl Jones as the voice of Mufasa.) Obviously, The Lion King is not a direct adaptation of Hamlet, as it’s a Disney animated musical family film with a happy ending while Shakespeare’s play is a tragedy with a famously downbeat ending.

Hamlet (1996)

Just six years after Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet came this version written, directed and starring Kenneth Branagh in the title role. Branagh updated the setting to 19th century Denmark and, unlike many other screen adaptations, kept more of the original text intact, which led to his film running four hours long (!). Branagh’s epic cast includes Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Robin Williams, Gérard Depardieu, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, Rufus Sewell, Charlton Heston, Richard Attenborough, Judi Dench, and John Gielgud. Sadly, despite being largely well received by critics, Branagh’s Hamlet proved a major box office bomb.

Hamlet (2000)

Like 2026’s Hamlet or The Bad Sleep Well, this adaptation is a contemporary interpretation where the royal kingdom has been replaced by big business. Ethan Hawke plays the brooding son of Sam Shepard’s CEO of the Denmark Corporation, who is slain by his brother (Kyle MacLachlan) so he could take over the company. The stellar supporting cast includes Bill Murray as Polonius, Liev Schreiber as Laertes, Julia Stiles as Ophelia, Diane Venora as Gertrude, Steve Zahn as Rosencrantz, and Casey Affleck as Fortinbras. Fun fact: This is Julia Stiles’ third contemporary Shakespeare film adaptation, the others being 10 Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew) and O (Othello).

Hamlet 2

This 2008 comedy stars Steve Coogan as failed actor-turned-equally unsuccessful high school drama teacher Dana Marschz, whose greatest acting accomplishments were a herpes medication commercial, an appearance on Xena, and a few infomercials. With his job, marriage and perhaps even his sanity at stake, Dana needs to do something big and exceptionally creative to save himself. He needs a masterpiece, and his masterpiece is Hamlet 2: a stage musical sequel to the Shakespeare play. Coogan’s Hamlet gets a time machine that allows him to not only save characters killed off by the Bard in his downbeat original, but to also bring in historical figures such as Jesus and Hillary Clinton.

Ophelia

Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley plays the title role in this 2018 drama directed by Claire McCarthy, which tells the story of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective instead. It’s based on both the Shakespeare play and Lisa Klein’s novel Ophelia, which gives the title character more agency than she has in the play as well as a different ending. The cast includes George MacKay as Hamlet, Naomi Watts as Gertrude, Clive Owen as Claudius, and Tom Felton as Laertes.

The Northman

Director Robert Eggers’ “Viking Hamlet” is based on Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum, the ancient Norse saga of a vengeful prince that inspired Shakespeare’s play. The legend of Amleth contains many of the same basic characters and story elements that later appeared in Hamlet. It stars Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth (Hamlet), Nicole Kidman as Queen Gudrun (Queen Gertrude in Hamlet), Ethan Hawke as King Aurvandil (Hamlet’s doomed dad), and Anya Taylor-Joy as Olga, who Eggers said is his film’s equivalent to Ophelia but “only in the fact that she’s the love interest. … She’s a much stronger character than Ophelia.”

In his The Northman review, which he gave a score of 8/10, IGN critic Siddhant Adlakha said “The Northman works best when it dives head-first into dreams and disorienting visions, but it slows down when it becomes a more traditional Hollywood narrative. With viciousness relegated to its margins, it often feels neutered and bloodless, but still ends up on the right side of entertaining thanks to its pulsating music and measured performances.”

Grand Theft Hamlet

This charming 2024 documentary is about out-of-work British actors Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen who, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, staged a production of Hamlet entirely within the video game Grand Theft Auto. In his Grand Theft Hamlet review, IGN critic Matt Donato calls it “an outrageous story of blind ambition” and “an irreplicable experience that speaks volumes about following your dreams despite the challenges that await. The reward will always be worthwhile, even if it’s just about the friends you make and NPC cops you massacre along the way.”

Hamnet

Chloé Zhao directed this emotionally devastating, award-winning 2025 adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, which explores the relationship between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley in an Oscar-winning, powerhouse performance). While the film chronicles how Will and Agnes met and fell in love, it’s ultimately a study in grief after their son Hamnet (a heartbreaking Jacobi Jupe) dies. How each parent responds to the loss of their only boy and the toll it takes on their relationship culminates in Shakespeare channeling his pain into the play that would become his masterpiece, Hamlet.

Hamlet (2026)

Riz Ahmed plays the title role in director Aneil Karia’s contemporary adaptation, which is set within London’s elite South Asian community. Cultural specificities are woven in throughout the film, from funeral and wedding rituals to a dance performance to the ghost of Hamlet’s father (Avijit Dutt) speaking to his son not in English but Hindi. The movie also alters Shakespeare’s text in some key ways, such as giving one of Horatio’s big scenes in the original play to Ophelia (Morfydd Clark) instead.

What’s your favorite Hamlet movie? Let us know in the comments.