Queer Cult Classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Is Getting a Sequel

Roadshow

To paraphrase the VengaBoys, the drag queen bus is coming, and everybody’s jumping.

More than 30 years after the original, queer cult classic Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a film about three drag queens taking a road trip across the Australian outback in a bus named Priscilla (“It’s the titular role!”), will get a sequel according to Deadline. The stars of the 1994 film — Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp, and Guy Pearce —  will also return to reprise their roles. The script has already been written and the project is currently searching for financing, director Stephan Elliott told The Guardian.

The film, which won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, follows Mitzi Del Bra (Weaving), Felicia Jollygoodfellow (Pearce), and Bernadette Bassenger (Stamp), a trans woman, on a journey from Sydney to Alice Springs. Though he admitted he had previously been reluctant to revisit the world of Priscilla, Elliott said he took on the project because, “I had something that needed to be said.”

“People have been screaming for me to do this for 30 years. And suddenly I had the realization that we’re all getting old. We’re losing people,” Elliott told the Guardian. “And with Trump coming in now – it’s all about to erupt again. Somebody said to me, ‘Is this the right time to make this film?’ I said, ‘It is the perfect time to make this film.’”

He added, “People think of the original film as a lot of costumes and music and great fun, but it’s also a dagger in the heart. I’m not going to do just tits and feathers.”

Priscilla premiered at a time when the art of drag was just beginning to go mainstream. In 1992, RuPaul (maybe you’ve heard of her), rose to stardom thanks to her hit single “Supermodel (You Better Work),” which put a drag queen on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time. The came Priscilla in 1994, followed by To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, another one of the first major Hollywood films to depict drag queens in the lead roles, the following year. Today, while cultural phenomena such as RuPaul’s Drag Race have brought the art form into the world of competitive reality TV, a right-wing cultural and political backlash against drag has taken root in U.S. right-wing politics.

Nicole, we know of an LGBTQ\+ publication that would absolutely love to make this happen.

While the original took place solely in Australia, Elliott said that the sequel, which took him five years to complete, will include scenes outside Australia as well. “I don’t want to repeat myself, so it’s taken me a long while to come up with something, to realize that there’s something that needs to be said about tolerance,” he said.

Elliott’s interview comes only a few weeks after The Guardian revealed that the bus from the original film had been found in a remote section of New South Wales, 30 years after it went missing. According to the Guardian, the History Trust of South Australia is now restoring the vehicle, which has been damaged by years out in the open, as well as bushfires and floods.

“When the bus surfaced it felt like, is this some kind of celestial lineup?” Elliott said. “There’s lots of work to be done. But we’re off.”

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Originally Appeared on them.