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Pacino to play King Lear in new film adaptation

Al Pacino is to reunite with director Michael Radford for a big-screen version of King Lear, Variety reports.

Pacino has never played Lear before, on stage nor on screen, but the 68-year-old actor does have some form in taking Shakespeare out of the theatre and into the cinema: his Looking for Richard, a bravura chronicle of his personal investigation into the facts and fictions behind the Bard's Richard III, was widely praised in 1996.

King Lear will mark his second collaboration with English director Radford on a Shakespeare adaptation: 2004's The Merchant of Venice met with a mixed reception. Radford, director of Il Postino and 1984, has also adapted the script from the play...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)