Award-winning director Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom) has updated Shakespeare's classic tragedy of young love and teen suicide in a unique new film, in which the warring Capulets and Montagues are gangsters who carry guns instead of swords. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Basketball Diaries) and Claire Danes (My So-Called Life, Little Women) as the doomed lovers, the film is set in a modern city. The actors speak Shakespeare's words--but with their own American accents. Readers can now experience this new vision of Shakespeare's violent, tragic play alongside the Bard s original text, in a special single volume that features an introduction by the film's director. --back cover