The 'unnecessary' 'Shakespeare in Love' sequel

Hollywood has never shied away from making unnecessary sequels (Titanic II, anyone?), but critics are scoffing particularly hard at plans to create a follow-up to Miramax's 1998 Oscar winner Shakespeare in Love. After all, the movie ended with Will Shakespeare and his lover and muse Viola de Lessops parting ways — he to become a world-famous playwright, and she to marry another and move to the New World. How exactly do you follow that up — especially given what we know about the rest of Shakespeare's life?

Shakespeare, post break-up: "Where does one go after Shakespeare in Love," asks Dave Itzkoff at The New York Times. Will anyone pay to go see "Shakespeare In A Disappointing Marriage With Anne Hathaway, Running Out the Clock While Thinking of Gwyneth Paltrow"?

"Shakepeare in Love sequel to be, apparently, after Miramax-Weinstein deal"

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Try an older Bard: Although Gwyneth Paltrow has "not exactly been waiting around for a Shakespeare in Love sequel," says Darren Franich at Entertainment Weekly, we shouldn't dismiss it "out of hand." There's bound to be a good idea for a movie out there — what if "the two lovers meet again toward the end of the Bard's life, as he's writing The Tempest?"

"The Weinstein Company will make sequels to Miramax movies: Shakespeare in Love 2?"

It could be a spin-off: It's unlikely viewers will want to see Will meet "another girl who acts as his muse," says Richard Lawson at Gawker, but "to be fair," the Miramax deal says it could be a sequel or a spin-off. Could the movie possibly tell the story of Elizabethan playwright John Webster, "introduced briefly as a rodent-torturing youngster" in the first film?

"Miramax's exciting new business plan: Sequels!"

It will end up being more of the same: Perhaps in "Shakespeare in Love-ier," says Willa Paskin at New York, the hero could fall in love "with a boy who is really a girl... again!" Except, this time, "instead of being inspired to write Twelfth Night, he wrote Macbeth!"

"Miramax and the Weinstein Brothers will now bring you Shakespeare in Love 2"