Joss Whedon Does Shakespeare

So yesterday's big news, as broken by a tweet from Nathan Fillion, that Joss Whedon made a small independent movie of Much Ado About Nothing starring several of his beloved actors, is actually true. The press release confirmed it, and a series of interviews with Entertainment Weekly provides the background we were missing.



Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof as Beatrice and Benedick.

 Apparently Joss' wonderful wife, with whom he was supposed to go on vacation to Italy for their 20th anniversary upon the completion of shooting The Avengers, told her husband that instead of a vacation he should do that movie that's been sitting in his head for years. It's long been known that during Buffy, Angel, Firefly and so on, Joss would have a collection of the actors over to his (apparently lovely) house to do Shakespeare readings for fun. One time they did Much Ado with the fantastic Amy Acker (Angel, Dollhouse) and underrated Alexis Denisof (Angel, married to Alyson Hannigan of Buffy) as the leads, and ever since he's wanted to film it.

So he did. He assembled cast and crew, using the small company Bellwether Films that he and his wife created in order to do just such a small, indie project (like Dr. Horrible), and filmed it entirely in 12 days on location at his Santa Monica home.

The rest of the cast includes such favorite Whedon alums as Nathan Fillion, Sean Maher (who recently came out, which I did not know, kudos), Fran Kranz, Clark Gregg, and Tom Lenk.

The film will be ready for release on the movie festival circuit by Spring of 2012.

"Shiny" doesn't even begin to describe my excitement. Hey Nonny Nonny, indeed.