Iconic 1990s film getting sequel 30 years later with original cast, director confirms-Asyia Iftikhar-Entertainment – Metro

Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert will return for a sequel 30 years on. (Picture: Shutterstock)

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert director Stephan Elliott said now is the ‘perfect time’ for a sequel of the trailblazing 1994 drag film set in Australia.

The widely-beloved classic follows drag queens Antony ‘Tick’ Belrose/Mitzi Del Bra (Hugo Weaving), Adam Whitley/Felicia Jollygoodfellow (Guy Pearce) and bereaved trans woman Bernadette Bassenger (Terence Stamp) as they travel from Sydney to Alice Springs in the eponymous bus Priscilla to perform disco hits glammed up in fabulous drag attire.

The ahead-of-its-time film has amassed a huge fanbase (both straight and LGBTQ+) over the years, resulting in the popular immersive musical theatre extravaganza Priscilla The Party! in London and jubilation when the original bus, which mysteriously vanished post-filming, rocked up in New South Wales in 2019.

Now, Elliott has announced a sequel is coming our way as the OG band is getting back together. Naturally, with a cameo from the titular bus herself.

‘I’m not repeating myself,’ Elliott told Deadline when the news broke. ‘We’ll start the new film in Australia, but by God, we’re going on one helluva journey.’

With the script, cast members and political appetite for a film uplifting the drag community in place, according to Elliott all that’s left is ‘working out deals’ to get the project officially greenlit.

The bus that took our pioneering through on their drag adventures, Priscilla. (Picture: Shutterstock)

The sequel announcement comes after much dilly-dallying from Elliott over whether he wanted to revisit the magical world he built all those years ago.

‘I thought, what am I going to do? Stick them on a cruise ship, stick them on a train? You name it, over the years I’ve been pitched Priscilla 2 in spades,’ he added.

So what changed? Well, the 59-year-old director ‘suddenly’ realised he ‘had something that needed to be said’ as he told the Guardian.

‘People have been screaming for me to do this for 30 years,’ he continued. ‘And suddenly I had the realisation that we’re all getting old. We’re losing people,’ Elliott said.

‘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.”‘

Over the past few years, the US has seen a swathe of anti-drag bills introduced as the drag community continues to be the target of toxic public debate.

TV shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race and HBO series We’re Here are fighting back against the harmful anti-drag narrative, and now Elliott is throwing his hat in the ring.

Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert will have the original cast reprising their roles. (Picture: Shutterstock)

‘This is not a dire story, it is pretty extravagant,’ he said, after revealing his father and mother’s deaths in 2020 and 2023 gave him the motivation to finish writing the sequel that’s been five years in the making.

‘I’m going to give RuPaul a run for her money, let me tell you that. But I don’t want to repeat myself, so it’s taken me a long while to come up with something, to realise that there’s something that needs to be said about tolerance.’

The original cast are now much older, with Pearce aged 56, Weaving aged 64, and Stamp aged 85, although Elliott noted Stamp is ‘the fittest man I’ve ever met in my life.’

‘It took him a long time to think about it until he got there, but eventually he said to me, “You know what? You’re right. We’re not finished yet. The story is untold.”’

One thing is for sure, after introducing Tick’s eight-year-old son Benjamin in the original film, the sequel will be checking back in on him and his own family. ‘We have our three principals, but we have to build in the new world,’ Elliott concluded.

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