We guess we’ll cheer this idea with a Champagne flute under some fireworks? Nearly 100 years after F. Scott Fitzgerald released his magnum opus, The Great Gatsby is being adapted into a big-budget television miniseries. THR reports that Vikings creator Michael Hirst is leading the series as an international production, with a premium cable outlet expected to pick up the rights in the United States. Hirst’s “reimagined†Gatsby will be much different from what we saw in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation: He intends to explore “New York’s Black community in the 1920s as well as the musical subculture,†while “digging deeper into the hidden lives of its characters through the modern lens of a fractured American Dream.†This lens will also include “gender, race, and sexual orientation†and “the darker underbelly of the American experience.â€
The Fitzgerald estate is supporting the series, with the author’s great-granddaughter, Blake Hazard, serving as a producer. “I have long dreamt of a more diverse, inclusive version of Gatsby that better reflects the America we live in, one that might allow us all to see ourselves in Scott’s wildly romantic text,†Hazard said. “Michael brings a deep reverence for Scott’s work to the project but also a fearlessness about bringing such an iconic story to life in an accessible and fresh way.†Call it the Bridgerton effect, just with a lot more jazz and dead bodies floating in a swimming pool.