As BBC Likes It

British Broadcasting Corporation will be upstaging its own classics by filming new versions of all 37 of the Bard’s plays. For the production of the entire canon over a 12-year period, BBC has enlisted Sam Mendes and his Neal Street Company.

"We are at an early stage at the moment, but we are planning to do the complete of works of Shakespeare with Sam Mendes and his Neal Street production company," the Telegraph quoted a BBC spokeswoman, as saying.

The series is most likely to be the corporation’s most expensive and ambitious drama series. Hollywood’s greatest stars have been tipped to star in it, which includes Kate Winslet, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Jude Law, Dame Helen Mirren, and James McAvoy.

Mendes, a former director of the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London, who took the original idea to the corporation and who will himself direct several of the productions, said the series promised to be extraordinary. "Thirtyseven plays over 12 years. Just think of the fantastic array of actors and directors, and of course the plays, those incredible plays. And then think of them committed to film as a single entity. There are lots of details still to be ironed out, and I don’t know yet which of the plays I will direct myself," he added.

BBC’s had filmed Shakespeare series 30 years ago, which marked a defining moment in British television history. — ANI

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