Of all the adaptations of King Lear in the past, none have starred a screaming chipolata in a mansized wig.

So thank the lord above for Al Pacino. Not content to confine his bellowing, stupid-haired abilities to films where he gets to shout at people, hook up with improbably young women and then solve a murder at the end, Al Pacino has decided that his next movie will be King Lear.

And we’re looking forward to it – if only to hear Al Pacino yell “I PRITHEE, dotter, do NO-ORRRT make me MAY-ADDD,” in that peculiar way of his.

Remember when a new Al Pacino film came with a mark of quality? No, nor can we, but that’s because we were born after 1975. We can remember when a new Al Pacino variously came with a mark of a crappy second sequel, or the mark of a hideous Madonna vehicle, or a mark simply reading “Hoo-ah,” but never really a mark of quality.

Thanks to 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill and Ocean’s Thirteen, Al Pacino currently ranks somewhere between Stephen Baldwin and Larry The Cable Guy in terms of box office desirability. Give the average punter a choice between watching the new Al Pacino movie or jamming their head inside a binbag full of angry snakes for 15 minutes, and roughly 98% of them will opt for the snakes. The remaining two percent are sadists.

So it’s clear that Al Pacino needs to give himself a jolt to remind himself that he didn’t just get into the acting game to chew scenery in a succession of increasingly bewildering haircuts. He needs to reconnect with his craft. Al Pacino needs Shakespeare in his life.

And that’s precisely what he’s doing. Al Pacino has announced that his next movie is likely to be an adaptation of King Lear, as Variety reports:

While Pacino has played many Shakespearean characters, he has never played King Lear. “Al has been offered this role many times over the years, but didn’t feel ready,” Navidi said. “He’s ready now. The film will be true to its period, very similar to the classical look of ‘Merchant of Venice.’ Michael came up with the most brilliant adaptation and Al and I flipped for it.”

You see, Al Pacino didn’t want to play Lear any earlier, because he felt he wasn’t ready. You just can’t play King Lear as a youngster – you need to spend a career preparing for it by getting older and older and louder and louder and starring in shittier and shittier films until you’re completely ravaged by grief about the way you’ve wasted the last 30 years by spunking away your natural talent on a series of largely pointless endeavours. So in that sense, Al Pacino is more prepared for King Lear than anyone else in history.

But that’s not to say this will be easy for Pacino, because there’s another King Lear in production starring Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Keira Knightley and Gwyneth Paltrow, and the two are bound to compete for viewers. Which one will you go and see?

Everyone dies in the end, by the way. There, you don’t have to go and see either of them now.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!