Because to an artist like Ethan Hawke, William Shakespeare’s plays are just so much paper that floats in and out of his life like snow, Hawke is reteaming with his Hamlet director Michael Almereyda on another contemporary adaptation of the Bard. This time it’s Cymbeline, a tragedy that’s generally considered by scholars to be one of Shakespeare’s lesser works, “but it’s still Shakespeare, so come on.”[—official scholarly quote.]
The project is described as “in the style of” Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, likely because it would be uncouth for Hawke and Almereyda to name-check their own modern-day Shakespeare movie, as well as “in the vein of Sons Of Anarchy.” Of course, it could also probably be described as “Sons Of Anarchy,” seeing it’s an “epic battle between dirty cops and a drug-dealing biker gang” that similarly follows the modern school of Shakespeare interpretation by putting some motorcycles in it. That school will now be combined with the classical theory of also adding Ethan Hawke. It won't be called Hamlet Rides Again, so that's dumb.
In news of equally Shakespearean tragedy, at some point Ethan Hawke turned into Mark McGrath.