Romeo and Juliet on screen the story have also been filmed, most notably "West Side Story", Prokofiev's ballet "Romeo and Juliet" and "Romanoff and Juliet". Several theatrical films, such as "Shakespeare in Love" and "Romeo Must Die", consciously use elements of Shakespeare's plot. Producer Irving Thalberg pushed MGM for five years to make a "Romeo and Juliet", in the face of the studio's opposition: which stemmed from Louis B. Mayer's belief that the masses considered the Bard over their heads, and from the austerity forced on the studios by the depression. It was only when Jack L. Warner announced his intention to film Max Reinhardt's
Romeo and Juliet on screen of Shakespeare's play: Robert Hatch in The Nation said "We had come to see a play... perhaps we should not complain that we were shown a sumptuous travelogue", and Time's reviewer added that "Castellani's "Romeo and Juliet" is a fine film poem... Unfortunately it is not Shakespeare's poem!" In 1992, Leon Garfield abridged the play to 25 minutes for the S4C/Soyuzmultfilm series. Such drastic abridgement inevitably led to emphasising plot over character, and the "Romeo and Juliet" episode has been described as "almost absurdly frenetic". This episode was directed by Efim Gamburg, using cel animation. The PBS series "Wishbone" aired