Ian Doescher Reimagines, Shakespeare Obliges

As far as science fiction films go, the following are ones I reveled in the most: The Matrix, Alien, Minority Report, and more recently Transcendence and Her.  I loved Star Trek from decades ago, but never quite gravitated to the film adaptations of the popular TV series.  However, despite its high acclaim and breathtaking success, Star Wars was more of an occasional curiosity than anything that had any pull on me.  Until now, perhaps.

I ran into this recently from c|net Exclusive cover peek at new Shakespeare 'Star Wars' prequel parody.  I had heard about William Shakespeare's Star Wars, but my merely modest interest in SW was not enough for me to look into it, despite my longstanding love for WS.  Again, until now.  I'm not sure if the illustration for the upcoming installment of WSSW (below) is preliminary or final:  believe the title will be Forsooth, The Phantom Menace.

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Doescher claims to be only a Star Wars and Star Trek fan and not well versed in other science-fiction literature. The idea for WSSW came to him when he went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland shortly after reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. After the first draft was shown to LucasFilm, their response was “We like this and it’s fun, but we’d like to see Ian do more with it. Go ahead and have some more fun with it, and go out of bounds of movie itself”, so he rewrote it.

Reference: Ian Doescher.

The notion of re-imagining a $4.38 billion science fiction juggernaut, and moreover re-writing it à la Shakespeare (i.e. iambic pentameter, blank verse), intrigue me greatly.  Here is a reference sheet for said juggernaut:

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So far Doescher has published his version of the original trilogy:

1. William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope
2. William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back
3. William Shakespeare's The Jedi Doth Return

His prequel trilogy will be published one by one this year, in time for the release of Episode VII - Star Wars: The Force Awakens - the first of the sequel trilogy, on December 18th:

1. William Shakespeare's Forsooth, the Phantom Menace
2. William Shakespeare's Alack! of the Clones
3. William Shakespeare's Tragedy of the Sith's Revenge

So I have plenty of time to watch all the George Lucas et al masterpieces on DVD and read all the Ian Doescher re-imaginations!