During the rise of the "teen" movie, in the 1990s and early 2000s, directors and screenwriters often looked to tried-and-true source material to inspire their plots and characters. This served not only to give teenaged characters some real stakes to come up against in the plots, it also enlivened older stories that might not otherwise seem accessible to young people. Films like 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless, Whatever it Takes, Get Over It, and She's the Man all took inspiration from classic works. And that list is only beginning to scratch the surface.
While Clueless took its story from Jane Austen's Emma, Cruel Intentions from Dangerous Liaisons, and Whatever it Takes modeled itself after Cyrano de Bergerac, a huge catalog of teen films took their inspiration from the Bard. In an article about this phenomenon in The Huffington Post, Claire Fallon writes, "One can’t help but wonder, however, if some of these adaptations would make the great wordsmith squirm, especially the vast array of teen flicks cannibalized from his oeuvre."
Among the adaptations of Shakespeare's works set in high school is 10 Things I Hate About You, the Julia Stiles/Heath Ledger vehicle based on Taming of the Shrew, in which Kate becomes Kat, an angsty, Sylvia-Plath–loving senior who rolls her eyes at high school fun and games. Another is Get Over It, starring Kirsten Dunst, which loosely takes its inspiration from A Midsummer Night's Dream. A more dramatic adaptation is O, also starring Julia Stiles, an adaptation of Othello in which the titular character (played by Mekhi Phifer) is a high school basketball star.
