Thread by @BCDreyer

A, This is a terrible idea.
B, Barbra's Gypsy will make it to theaters first.

https://twitter.com/THR/status/1360333701150699520

P.S. An actual film of L. Frank Baum's actual novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is an interesting idea. A film of The Marvelous Land of Oz—you know, the one in which the boy Tip is actually Princess Ozma—could rock.

And now that you* mention it, I'm shocked no one's ever gotten around to filming Geoff Ryman's Was.

*I.

I think that The King and I is a masterwork (also Carousel, though that's an argument for another day), but it creates and inhabits its own reality, and if you attempt to rework it it will absolutely fall apart.

The King and I is based on a screenplay based on a novel based on memoirs written by a woman who was, shall we say, known to embellish the truth. You can’t reconnect it with history. Accept it as it is, or don’t.

My favorite Anna Leonowens fact is that she was Boris Karloff’s great-aunt.

Also, she was born in Bombay, was likely part-Indian, and didn’t set foot in Great Britain till she was in her, I think, thirties.