2. Motocrossed (2001)
Based on: Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night has been adapted a few times to the big screen, usually in fairly creative ways. However, our pick for the weirdest adaptation goes to Motocrossed, a Disney Channel Original Movie from 2001. The reason? It’s absolutely insane.
In fairness, Twelfth Night’s gender-swapping story still works within the context of modern society, as it plays on the idea of binary gender norms which are still largely as they were in Shakespeare’s time. Motocrossed introduces Shakespeare to the noble art of, well, motocross, making for an unlikely marriage in a TV movie made for preteen audiences. It really is that simple.
What makes Motocrossed one of the weirdest movie adaptations of Shakespeare is, plain and simple, its premise. It’s not that the film doesn’t make it work, or that it’s a bad movie, but just that it seems a random choice. We can only imagine that Disney listed as many extreme sports as they could and then pulled one out of a hat, then did the same for Shakespeare plays, and that’s how the idea for Motocrossed was born.