Romeo and Juliet, the iconic play by William Shakespeare, is getting the modern reimagining treatment as a musical film. Titled Juliet & Romeo, it stars Rebel Wilson (Pitch Perfect) as Lady Capulet, Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter film series) as Lord Montague, Clara Rugaard as Juliet, and Jamie Ward as Romeo.

The film’s songs are co-written by Edgar Kidd Bogart, whose credits include Beyonce’s “Halo,” MKTO’s “Classic,” Rihanna’s “SOS,” and many more. Briarcliff Entertainment released the first look at the song, “Mask I Wear,” featuring the singing voice of Rebel Wilson, Ledisi, Tayla Parx, Clara Rugaard, Martina Ortiz Luis, and Quinn Bogart.

“I definitely asked to hear the music because I’m like, ‘If this music isn’t any good, it’s not gonna be a very good movie,'” Wilson tells Nerd Reactor. “And you know because Romeo and Juliet has been adapted in so many different ways and so I was like, ‘Okay, I got to hear the music.’ They sent me the SoundCloud that has all the songs, and they were just demos at that point, but I was like, ‘Damn! These are really good songs.’ They’re really well constructed pop songs and they really have the right emotions to tell the story.

“So yeah, so I listened to it and then I went into the studio to record my bits and I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ And they’re very exacting in this movie which I think is great because the vocals are so incredible in the film. So we really did it line by line in the studio and made it sound good, but it’s a bit daunting because there’s some really amazing vocalists in this film.”

Jamie Ward and Clara Rugaard portray a pair of star-crossed lovers, with the setting of 14th-century Verona, Italy.

“Filming a movie… I’m still fairly new to it, but it is crazy,” Ward said. “Even Clara and I, we’d be working on these really intimate moments and there’d be 200 people around us, moving lights or doing the clapping board. We sort of kept our relationship very close and tight within the set that we were in, and we supported each other through that.”

Ward portrays Romeo as a charming, romantic and passionate teenager, but he admits that he is the opposite of that.

“Well, I’ve never really perceived myself like that, and I wasn’t very good with girls when I was younger,” Ward explained. “I guess I still struggle to understand how I can be perceived like that in a film, but it’s my job to bring the essence of Romeo to the screen and to my work. So hopefully that came across. But yeah, Romeo is going through so many different things, so many things that are really exciting to explore. There’s a relationship with his dad, there’s the conflict of the families, there’s loyalty to his friends. And they were really deep and exciting things that I got to experience on set to portray.”

Directing the film is Timothy Scott Bogart. His family has been a big help with the production including his younger brother Evan Kidd Bogart, the songwriter; his brother Bradley Bogart, a producer; and his daughter Quinn Bogart, the second unit director. Quinn was with Timothy in Italy for almost a year for principal photography.

“Well, working with families is, it’s especially fun when you’re the older brother, right?” Bogart said. “Yeah. That’s right. But working with my brother, Evan, I’ve done it now a number of times. It’s such a joy. It’s such an incredible creative process.

Bogart felt that it was important that Juliet & Romeo was filmed in Italy.

“It was essential,” the director said. “Because we were doing this very interesting, original pop music, inner voice of these characters, there was going to be this fantastical element. And therefore I felt everything else had to be so grounded and so real and so authentic. Because audiences today, they feel that and they react to that. And so there was never a question. We were going to Italy where the story took place, but also we were not going to step foot on a soundstage or use a green screen.

“We were going to find real castles on real mountains and real locations. And we were going to make everything else so grounded and real that when this inner voice came out in this incredible music, there was this alchemy that worked, which hadn’t really been done quite this way. I certainly have never done it before. So it was a hope. It feels now that I think we’ve accomplished quite a bit. Obviously the audience will ultimately be the determining factor, but that was the hope.”

Also starring in the film are Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts series), Nicholas Podany (Saturday Night), Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (Sing Street, History’s Vikings), Rupert Graves (BBC’s Sherlock), Ruper Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Shrek 2), and Derek Jacobi (Gladiator).

Juliet & Romeo is scheduled for release in North America theaters on May 9, 2025.