Classic Rewrites for a Modern Reader

The American novelist Gillian Flynn has been signed up to rewrite Shakespeare's Hamlet. This comes courtesy of the Hogarth Shakespeare series, in which modern writers are being commissioned to re-write classic works. They claim the series is "for contemporary readers." You know, I always thought that the joy of Shakespeare was in the depth, complexity and beauty of his writing. Wanting to simplify it for modern-day readers, supposedly so much better educated than any other generation since the year dot, seems ludicrous.
Are publishers so desperate for revenue that they will stoop to this?

So far, this is the list of re-writes:
Scandinavian bestseller Jo Nesbo ~ Macbeth

Margaret Atwood ~ The Tempest 

Tracy Chevalier ~ Othello
Howard Jacobson ~ The Merchant of Venice

Anne Tyler ~ The Taming of the Shrew
Jeanette Winterson ~ The Winter's Tale.

It follows a trend set by The Austen Project which paired six bestselling contemporary authors with Jane Austen’s six complete works: Sense & Sensibility ~ Joanna Trollope; Northanger Abbey ~ Val McDermid; Pride & Prejudice ~ Curtis Sittenfeld; Emma ~ Alexander McCall Smith. 

The new Shakespeare series will launch in 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of his death. I understand Shakespeare himself is believed to have drawn from retellings of the Norse legend of Amleth, from around the 13th century) so maybe he won't mind if someone rewrites his play, but I can't help feeling that these long-dead authors - if they feel anything like authors today - will be searching for their scalping knives and planning a mass, if ghostly, visitation.