Film
Macbeth
Justin Kurzel's Macbeth trades Shakespeare's usual candlelit stateliness for mud, blood and slow-motion carnage. Fassbender plays the Thane as a shell-shocked soldier already fraying before the witches even speak; Cotillard's Lady Macbeth is quieter and colder than most. It's gorgeous, brutal, and more interested in dread and atmosphere than clean verse-speaking — best for viewers who want tragedy as psychological horror rather than a faithful classroom text.
If you liked this
The Tragedy of Macbeth2021
The purest head-to-head: same play, told in stark black-and-white soundstage artifice, with Denzel Washington's Macbeth curdling from soldier to something haunted and Frances McDormand icy and exact as his wife.
But The theatrical, boxed-in set design and slower rhythm can feel closer to a filmed stage production than cinema.

The Northman2022
Same DNA as Kurzel's film — prophecy, murdered kings, a queasy wife pushing her husband toward vengeance — but rebuilt as a howling Viking revenge epic full of mud, ritual and berserker fury.
But Leans further into myth and spectacle than psychology; if you wanted interior torment over battle-axes, this trades some of that away.

Ran1985
Kurosawa's late masterpiece takes King Lear into feudal Japan for the same scale of betrayal, madness and war Kurzel chases — vast battle sequences shot like moving paintings, grief as spectacle.
But It's a different Shakespeare play entirely, nearly three hours long, and its formal Noh-inflected performances take adjustment.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Throne of Blood1957
It's a direct adaptation of the same play, decades earlier and in a wholly different culture — proof the story survives translation into any era or tongue.
Kurosawa moved the exact same ambition-murder-guilt machinery into feudal Japan decades before Kurzel, staging it with Noh-theater stylization, an arrow-riddled climax, and a fog-choked castle that feels genuinely cursed.
But Black-and-white, subtitled, and performed in a deliberately theatrical register that can feel alienating if you want naturalism.

More like this (8)
There Will Be Blood2007
No witches, no crown — just a man's naked ambition metastasizing into total isolation, anchored by one of the great unraveling performances in American film.
But It swaps political tragedy for character study; if you wanted the supernatural dread of prophecy, it isn't here.

Hamlet1996
Branagh's full-text, four-hour production remains the gold standard for hearing Shakespeare's language given room to breathe, with a starry ensemble committing completely to every soliloquy and swordfight.
But It's a different play about grief and indecision rather than ambition, and the runtime is a real commitment.

Richard III1995
Ian McKellen's charismatic villain-protagonist claws his way to the throne through murder and manipulation, the action relocated to a chillingly plausible fascist 1930s England.
But Its sardonic, knowing tone and direct-to-camera asides are almost comic — a very different register from Macbeth's dread.

Lady Macbeth2016no page yet
The title is a deliberate provocation: Florence Pugh's trapped Victorian bride is just as cold, calculating and willing to kill for freedom as her namesake, in a ferocious lead performance.
But It isn't actually Shakespeare's story — different plot, different century, no witches — so don't expect the play.
Taboo2017
Tom Hardy broods through a filthy, occult-tinged 19th-century revenge story soaked in the same paranoia, ambition and moral rot that Kurzel finds in Scotland's fog.
But The plotting can meander and its supernatural elements stay frustratingly vague rather than resolving into anything.

Rob Roy1995
Set in the same Highland landscape of clan honor, betrayal and brutal swordplay, but played straighter — a heroic historical epic rather than a psychological unraveling.
But It lacks any of the supernatural dread or moral ambiguity that makes Macbeth's fall so unsettling.

Scarface1983
Same engine as Macbeth — seize power through murder, spiral into paranoid isolation, fall — just relocated from a Scottish castle to a Miami mansion, and played as trash instead of tragedy.
Strip away the verse and the witches and you get Tony Montana: a man who murders his way to power and is consumed by the paranoia his own ambition creates.
But It has none of the poetry or moral ambiguity — just cocaine-fuelled excess and gleeful overacting.

The Death of Stalin2017
Same paranoid court and bloodletting that follow a death and a power vacuum, but tipped into satire — showing how thin the line is between tyranny's horror and its absurdity.
The same terrified inner circle jockeying for power after a leader's death — betrayal, murder and moral collapse — except played as vicious, gasping-for-air farce instead of tragedy.
But If you want the material taken seriously, watching it as comedy might feel like a betrayal of the tone.

People
Cast
Michael FassbenderMacbeth
Marion CotillardLady Macbeth
Paddy ConsidineBanquo
Sean HarrisMacduff
Jack ReynorMalcolm
Elizabeth DebickiLady Macduff
David ThewlisDuncan
David HaymanLennox
Maurice RoëvesMenteith
Ross AndersonRosse
James HarknessAngus- Jack MadiganMacbeth Child
Directing
- Justin KurzelDirector
- Jo BeckettScript Supervisor
Writing
- Jacob KoskoffScreenplay
- Michael LesslieScreenplay
- Todd LouisoScreenplay
- William ShakespeareTheatre Play
Production
- Jina JayCasting
- Andrew WarrenCo-Producer
- Bob WeinsteinExecutive Producer
- Danny PerkinsExecutive Producer
- Harvey WeinsteinExecutive Producer
- Jenny BorgarsExecutive Producer
- Olivier CoursonExecutive Producer
- Tessa RossExecutive Producer
- Arron CuthbertsonExtras Casting
- Emile ShermanProducer
- Iain CanningProducer
- Laura Hastings-SmithProducer
- Nuala Alen-BuckleyProduction Accountant
- Samantha BlackProduction Coordinator
- Samantha JolyProduction Executive
- Simone NicholsonProduction Executive
- Sara DesmondUnit Production Manager
Recommended by
Macbeth, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Throne of Blood, Richard III, Hamlet, Power