HAMLET, with its suspenseful story, its complexity, contradictions and emotional core, remains William Shakespeare's most frequently filmed play, which is saying a lot in oeuvre that sees near constant film adaptations. The tale delves into so many vital human themes – murder and violence, temptation and integrity, sex and desire, paranoia and madness – it seems eternally irresistible. With some forty different cinematic renditions, HAMLET constitutes a virtual film genre unto itself. In the silent era alone, seventeen HAMLETS were produced, two of them featuring female actors in the title role (Sara Bernhardt in 1900, Asta Nielsen in 1928).

One of the most renowned HAMLET versions is the shadow-filled, black-and-white 1948 production in which Laurence Oliver directed himself, garnering a Best Actor Academy Award. Olivier's brooding, blond incarnation of the Prince seemed so definitive that no other cinematic versions were attempted for fifteen years,

Soon, however, new HAMLETs began to emerge -- from a variety of countries and perspectives.

Notable classical adaptations include Grigori Kozintsev's 1964 Russian production, Tony Richardson's 1969 British film starring Nicol Williamson, and Franco Zeffirelli's production starring Mel Gibson. More recently, Kenneth Branagh launched an audaciously uncut version of the play with himself in the lead and an all-star supporting cast, receiving an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for his work with the bard’s words.

Michael Almereyda cites several somewhat eccentric productions as influences on his new HAMLET. He was inspired in part by the 1987 Finnish film "Hamlet Goes Business," from director Aki Kaurismaki, which gave the story a hilariously morose, mock-heroic treatment with Hamlet as a bratty would-be businessman who turns out to have poisoned his own father. Two stage productions also influenced Almereyda’s version: one mounted by the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, whose published notes on the play were inspirational to Almereyda; and Ingmar Bergman's stage production featuring Peter Stormare, performed in Swedish at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1990.

The list of significant cinematic HAMLETs would not be complete without acknowledging a cluster of films owing a deep debt to the melancholy Dane: Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well" (1961), Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" (a theatrical sensation in the late sixties, then a 1991 film) and Disney's "Hamlet" - `derived mega-hit "The Lion King" (1995), among others.