Movies like Macbeth
If Macbeth hooked you with its drama, these are the films to watch next. Every pick says why it matches.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMacbeth (2025)
Fearless and unforgettably creepy. This high-concept production, filmed live at London’s Donmar Warehouse, stars the formidable talents of David Tennant and Cush Jumbo in Shakespeare’s most infamous tragedy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hamlet (2026)
When Hamlet returns for his father’s funeral, he is stunned to discover his uncle Claudius is marrying his newly widowed mother. Visited by his father’s ghost, Hamlet learns his brutal murder was at the hands of Claudius and spirals into a quest for vengeance that exposes the rot at the heart of the family’s empire and threatens his own sanity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hamlet (2009)
David Tennant stars in a film of the Royal Shakespeare Company's award-winning production of Shakespeare's great play. Director Gregory Doran's modern-dress production was hailed by the critics as thrilling, fast-moving and, in parts, very funny.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRichard III (1995)
Having helped his brother King Edward IV take the throne of England, the jealous hunchback Richard, Duke of Gloucester, plots to seize power for himself. Masterfully deceiving and plotting against nearly everyone in the royal court, including his eventual wife, Lady Anne, and his brother George, Duke of Clarence, Richard orchestrates a bloody rise to power before finding all his gains jeopardized by those he betrayed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNational Theatre Live: Macbeth (2013)
Performing from within the walls of a deconsecrated Manchester church, Kenneth Branagh takes the lead role in this ambitious production of William Shakespeare's tragic tale of ambition and treachery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hamlet (1996)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, returns home to find his father murdered and his mother now marrying the murderer... his uncle. Meanwhile, war is brewing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHamlet (1990)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, finds out that his uncle Claudius killed his father to obtain the throne, and plans revenge.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOthello (1951)
Manipulated by his jealous ensign Iago, the Moorish general Othello is driven to believe that his new wife Desdemona is unfaithful, setting in motion a chain of deception, jealousy, and violence that leads to tragedy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNational Theatre Live: Macbeth (2024)
Blood will have blood. Unbridled ambition, supernatural forces, and murderous desires reign supreme in Shakespeare's most poetic examination of evil. When three witches tell Macbeth that he will become King of Scotland, he plots with his wife to attain the title through an assassination; a bloody act that gives him his crown and sends him careening down the path of his own undoing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018)
Considered by many to be the greatest tragedy ever written, King Lear sees two ageing fathers – one a King, one his courtier – reject the children who truly love them. Their blindness unleashes a tornado of pitiless ambition and treachery, as family and state are plunged into a violent power struggle with bitter ends.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
National Theatre Live: Hamlet (2015)
As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMacbeth (2015)
Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCoriolanus (2011)
Caius Martius, aka Coriolanus, is an arrogant and fearsome general who has built a career on protecting Rome from its enemies. Pushed by his ambitious mother to seek the position of consul, Coriolanus is at odds with the masses and unpopular with certain colleagues. When a riot results in his expulsion from Rome, Coriolanus seeks out his sworn enemy, Tullus Aufidius. Together, the pair vow to destroy the great city.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisOthello (2001)
With freshly rechristened characters and brand-new dialogue, this British TV production of Othello is a "rethinking" of Shakespeare's play, albeit still retaining the original's power and potency. The story is set in the London of the near future, a crime-ridden metropolis virtually torn apart by racial hostilities. By order of the Prime Minister, black police officer John Othello (Eamonn Walker) is promoted to Commissioner, a post dearly coveted by Othello's friend, mentor and fellow officer Ben Jago (Christopher Eccleston). Seething with jealousy, Jago contrives to discredit Othello in the eyes of the public, and to destroy John's interracial marriage to the lily-white Dessie (Keeley Hawes). Among those used as unwitting dupes to gain Jago's ends are Othello's trusted lieutenant, Michael Cass (Richard Coyle), scrupulously honest police constable Alan Roderick (Del Synnott), and Jago's own wife, Lulu (Rachael Stirling).
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Othello (1995)
The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNational Theatre Live: Coriolanus (2014)
When an old adversary threatens Rome, the city calls once more on her hero and defender: Coriolanus. But he has enemies at home too. Famine threatens the city, the citizens’ hunger swells to an appetite for change, and on returning from the field Coriolanus must confront the march of realpolitik and the voice of an angry people.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Macbeth (2018)
Entirely shot on green screen, Shakespeare’s Macbeth has been reinvented by director Kit Monkman (The Knife That Killed Me) in an exciting new film adaptation. Starring Mark Rowley, (The Last Kingdom, Luther). Monkman’s unique adaptation successfully bridges the gap between theatre and film to create a wholly new type of imaginative space. This radical new adaptation puts the audience’s engagement with the story centre-stage, amplifying the theatrical context of the original and creating truly innovative and thrilling cinematic vistas, whilst maintaining the language and themes of Shakespeare’s original play. Using background matte painting and computer modelling to generate the world in which the action plays out, the green screen allows Monkman to create his vision of a multi-tiered globe in which the characters play out their various fates.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
National Theatre Live: Othello (2013)
The Moorish general Othello is manipulated into thinking that his new wife Desdemona has been carrying on an affair with his lieutenant Michael Cassio when in reality it is all part of the scheme of a bitter ensign named Iago.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hamlet (2018)
Hamlet captures the Almeida Theatre's 2017 acclaimed production of William Shakespeare's great play, recorded as-live in its West End transfer on the stage of London's Harold Pinter Theatre. Robert Icke's innovative modern-dress production, featuring Andrew Scott, Juliet Stevenson, Angus Wright and Jessica Brown Findlay, has been widely acclaimed as a dazzlingly intelligent, forcefully contemporary staging. The Evening Standard hailed Andrew Scott's 'career-defining performance... he makes the most famous speeches feel fresh and unpredictable.'
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
National Theatre Live: Vanya (2024)
Andrew Scott brings multiple characters to life in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, filmed live in West End, London. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
King Lear (1970)
King Lear is a proud man who solicits praise from his three daughters in return for inheritance of the kingdom. Daughters Goneril and Regan profess their affection vehemently. Cordelia, who does not respect the process her father has chosen, does not humor him. Lear's perceived rejection from Cordelia leads to her banishment, thus splitting the kingdom between the other two. This hasty decision becomes his fatal error.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Hamlet (1964)
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHamlet (2000)
Modern day adaptation of Shakespeare's immortal story about Hamlet's plight to avenge his father's murder in New York City.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisKing Lear (2018)
An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNational Theatre Live: Antony & Cleopatra (2018)
Caesar and his assassins are dead. General Mark Antony now rules alongside his fellow defenders of Rome. But at the fringes of a war-torn empire the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and Mark Antony have fallen fiercely in love. In a tragic fight between devotion and duty, obsession becomes a catalyst for war.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Human, Space, Time and Human (2018)
A group of very different people set sail on an old warship. The passengers include a senator with his son, a newly-wed couple, a mysterious old man, a group of sex workers and a gang of violent criminals. At first the aggressive behaviour of the thugs and their leader is directed at the first class passengers, but then more and more indiscriminately against the rest of those on board. Rape is followed by murder and it’s not long before the first of numerous and increasingly brutal mutinies takes place.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Last Supper (2025)
In the days leading to betrayal, a gathering of disciples unravels into a web of secrets and hidden motives. As tensions simmer beneath the surface, trust is tested, and loyalty is questioned. The Last Supper becomes a night where nothing is as it seems, and every glance hides a deeper truth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Reckoning (2004)
In 14th Century England, this tale of murder and mystery follows a fugitive priest who falls in with a troupe of actors. As they arrive in a small town, the actors encounter a woman being sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft and murder. Discarding the expected bible stories, the actors now stage a performance based on the crime. Through the performance of the play, they discover a mystery.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Master Builder (2014)
A successful, ego-maniacal architect who has spent a lifetime bullying his wife, employees and mistresses wants to make peace as his life approaches its final act.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Like Macbeth and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Macbeth?
The closest matches to Macbeth are The Tragedy of Macbeth, Macbeth, Hamlet.
How are movies similar to Macbeth chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Macbeth, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.
Are there English movies like Macbeth?
Yes: The Tragedy of Macbeth, Macbeth, Hamlet.