A script, to be written by Andrea Berloff, has been ordered, and Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the film "Twilight," is in talks to helm the pilot. Hardwicke has also been attached to direct Emile Hirsch in a possible film version of another Shakespeare masterpiece, Hamlet.

Romeo and Juliet, the classic story of teenagers who fall for each other despite an ancient family feud, has been updated numerous times, perhaps most famously in the Broadway musical West Side Story, which re-imagined the story amidst the Anglo-Puerto Rican gang warfare of 1950s New York City.

Director Baz Luhrmann placed Shakespeare's language in contemporary Miami for an MTV-style updated film version in 1996 starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes. According to Deadline, contemporary Romeo and Juliet pilots that were set in New York and Chicago had been ordered by ABC for the past two seasons.

If the pilot is picked up to air, it will mark the first time Romeo and Juliet has been adapted, original setting intact, into a television series.