Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysRomeo + Juliet Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Shakespeare’s lovers speak adapted original dialogue in a modern world of media, weapons, and family rivalry. Examine how visual choices and changed details shape the tragedy.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 1996
- Genre
- Romantic tragedy
- U.S. rating
- PG-13
- Runtime
- Approx. 120 minutes
- Director
- Baz Luhrmann
- Screenplay
- Craig Pearce & Baz Luhrmann
- Based on
- William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
- Music
- Nellee Hooper, Marius de Vries & Craig Armstrong
- Featured cast
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo & Harold Perrineau
- Story setting
- Fictional contemporary Verona Beach · A stylized 1990s setting
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Gun violence, killings, blood, threatening confrontations, and the lovers’ deaths by suicide.
- Sexual references, a brief intimate scene, partial nudity, and intense kissing.
- Drug use, smoking, grief, and harsh parental pressure.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 9–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: Studio credits and rating · Content advisory (spoilers) · Folger: complete play