Confirmed earlier today, Oscar Wilde’s classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is set for a TV adaptation on Netflix, which will be titled The Grays.
Framed as a modern take on the novel and its fascination with eternal youth, as well as that obsession within our society, the Warner Bros. Television-fronted production will be set against today’s beauty industry.
Fans were initially excited on hearing the news, but a deeper dive shows that Dorian and Basil – the main character and the character who painted his titular portrait – are being reframed as siblings, and they are NOT pleased.
In fact, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to say that there’s already genuine outrage, which certainly doesn’t bode well for the show’s success. For context, this is due to the fact that the novel was heavily censored upon its original release, and in large part that despite this censorship the relationship between Dorian and Basil was used as evidence to jail Wilde on charges of homosexuality.
Some of the fan responses to the news:
@jerstonfilm said on X: “Throw it in the bin.”
@FlissReturneth said on X: “Wilde did not get publicly shamed and permanently ruined for writing a gay book only for streaming execs over a hundred years later to turn it into a brotherly relationship. This is chilling erasure and an insult to all the [stuff] that man went through just to get this story told.”
With public backlash already intense and growing, It’ll be interesting to see if the studio continues with the project as planned or makes any alterations (thanks, Deadline).