Margaret Cho, Tomás Matos, Bowen Yang, Joel Kim Booster and Matt Rogers in Disney's Fire Island. Photo / Supplied
Margaret Cho, Tomás Matos, Bowen Yang, Joel Kim Booster and Matt Rogers in Disney's Fire Island. Photo / Supplied
The month's hottest new rom-com is putting a modern, queer twist on a 19th-century classic - and it's taking pride of place on Disney+.
Fire Island is the latest movie from the streaming giant, written by and starring comedian Joel Kim Booster, alongside Saturday Night Live standout Bowen Yang andcomedian Margaret Cho.
The movie focuses on a group of friends on their annual trip to Fire Island, a gay holiday hotspot on the coast of Long Island in New York, and the romantic plights of Noah (Booster) and Howie (Yang), in a plot drawn from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
Speaking to Kita and Anita's Happy Hour, a ZM podcast hosted by Drag Race stars Kita Mean and Anita Wigl'it, Booster said that the original version of the script nearly veered closer to the original text.
"The original version of the script - my character Noah narrates the movie, but in an earlier version of the script, it was going to be an Emma Thompson type, an old British woman speaking in the language of regency narrating the story."
Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster in Fire Island. Photo / Supplied
Yang said that it takes the class commentary of Austen's book and moves it into the queer community, while celebrating the beloved island.
"There's not that much infrastructure. There's no paved roads, it's all boardwalk systems and small shacks," Yang said of the island, which is accessible only by ferry," he said.
"You feel like you're in a civilisation away from civilisation. You're in this really wonderful place where for generations people have escaped to feel liberated and feel like themselves as queer people."
