One big-budget version will star Sean Bean in the title role and Tilda Swinton as the scheming Lady Macbeth.

Going head-to-head with the British pair will be American Oscar winners Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jennifer Connelly. Both films will be filmed partly in Scotland, and both intend to appeal to today's audiences by using special effects and the latest technology to heighten the supernatural aspects of the classic drama.

Ghosts, witches, battle scenes and violent action will all be graphically depicted in the hope that the films will appeal to a broader audience than previous Shakespearean films. Antidote Films, which is producing the Philip Seymour Hoffman version, is promising a "visceral adaptation that emphasises the potently cinematic aspects of the drama".

Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, is sceptical. "Film makers and actors love to get their teeth into Shakespearean dialogue, " he said. "I think we will always see filmmakers looking to Shakespeare for their stories and trying to bring new creative cinematic twists to them, [but] you never really make a movie like that looking for huge box office. You do it for the love of the craft and the love of the language."

Both Hollywood productions will be beaten to a release date by an Australian version, a contemporary retelling set in the ganglands of Melbourne, starring Sam Worthington. It will make its debut at the Toronto film festival in September.

A project called Macbett (the Caribbean Macbeth) is reportedly going into production in the Caribbean. A fifth version, set in contemporary London, is listed on the Internet Movie Database as being in the works, but will probably not trouble Hollywood executives:

its estimated budget is £3,000 and the star and screenplay writer, Fergus March, has no other credits listed to his name.

Some of the world's leading filmmakers, including Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski, have made versions of Macbeth. The first, showing the duel scene from the play, was filmed in 1905, and proved such a success that seven more Macbeth films were turned out in the next 15 years.