When Queen Elizabeth I demands a tragic ending for Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s lovers come alive and defy their creator in this award-winning comedy.
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, October 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Screenwriter Barry J. Brock has completed Killing Juliet, a feature comedy set in Elizabethan London that turns the writing of Romeo and Juliet into a struggle between a playwright, a monarch and two fictional lovers unwilling to accept the ending written for them.
Set in 1595, the screenplay imagines Shakespeare premiering Romeo and Juliet as a comedy in which the lovers survive and their families reconcile. Queen Elizabeth I dismisses the happy ending as false and orders him to kill both characters. As he begins the rewrite, Juliet appears in his study to challenge the decision. Romeo soon joins her, leaving Shakespeare to negotiate with the very people whose fate he controls.
Juliet’s resistance drives the story beyond its comic premise. Intelligent and outspoken, she objects to being reduced to a symbol and insists that any tragic ending must preserve her dignity and have emotional meaning. Romeo proposes ways to escape their fate, while Shakespeare’s increasingly frustrated company, including Richard Burbage and comic actor Kempe, demands a final version it can perform.
The screenplay moves between backstage disorder, arguments in Shakespeare’s study and encounters with the Queen. Alternate endings range from a wedding to a bakery, turning the search for a convincing conclusion into a series of theatrical experiments. Beneath the comedy, Killing Juliet explores artistic ambition, the pressure to please authority and the responsibility of a writer to the characters he creates. Its central question is what makes a story endure through an audience’s recognition of love and loss.
Killing Juliet has received Best Comedy Screenplay awards from the Tokyo Film Awards and the Los Angeles Movie & Music Video Awards. Brock’s other screenplays include After the Bitter Winter, recognized with Best Drama Screenplay at the LA Film & Documentary Award and Best War Screenplay at Best Script Award London.
About Barry Brock
Barry J. Brock, Ed.D., is a screenwriter, educator and retired U.S. Navy officer with more than 25 years in higher education. He directed medical-service operations in Kuwait and Afghanistan and taught Business, Public Administration and Health Sciences at Barry University. His screenwriting spans historical stories, drama, comedy and horror. His other screenplays include Unfathomable, a historical feature based on the life of Civil War hero Robert Smalls.
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