While this year alone has seen several contemporary permutations of William Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet—including one that re-imagines the story as a war between sentient garden gnomes, and another from Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke that aims to be the sanitized network version of The Tudors—filmmakers never stop looking for a fresh angle on the story, because Shakespeare used up all the ideas for tragic romances way back in the 16th century, so what are they supposed to do?
Now Deadline reports that Fox 2000 has picked up Rebecca Serle’s forthcoming novel Rosaline for adaptation by Date Night producer Shawn Levy, who will spearhead a contemporary version of Shakespeare’s play set in high school (the early ‘00s are back!) that’s told from the point of view of Romeo’s first crush—a Capulet girl whose dedication to remaining celibate drives Romeo crazy, until he finds a different Capulet girl willing to let his soft light break through her yonder window, because even in the Renaissance, guys were dicks. But then they both end up dead, so she sort of gets the last laugh there. The screenplay comes from (500) Days Of Summer screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael W. Weber—who also wrote The Pink Panther 2, but don’t expect to see that on the poster.