Are you ready to go back down that yellow brick road?
The Wizard of Oz has been embedded in LGBTQ culture for almost 80 years now, with gay icon Judy Garland playing the lead role of Dorothy, a Kansas teen who dreams of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and travels to the magical world of Oz.
As well as being an excellent metaphor for coming out of the closet and finding your people, the classic musical even influenced gay slang, with the euphemism ‘A Friend of Dorothy’ being used to identify fellow queers at a time when being gay was illegal.
So you might be hesitant to learn that the film is receiving a retelling – but it’s not quite what you’d expect.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, movie studio Warner Bros. is developing an animated version of the film which will be told through the eyes of Dorothy’s faithful dog Toto.
Veteran screenwriter Mark Burton, whose previous big-screen work includes Madagascar and Gnomeo & Juliet, will pen the script as an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book Toto, while Jared Stern and Winsor Yuan will executive produce.
A synopsis of the book describes Toto as “a tale that is wonderfully familiar, but full of surprises too, as Michael Morpurgo brings his inimitable storytelling talents to this beloved story”.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the new adaptation doesn’t lose the queer undertones of the 1939 classic.
While we patiently wait for Toto, revisit an iconic scene from the original below.
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