You know the story. An airplane full of young boys crash-lands on a deserted island. Without the supervision of adults, they revert to feral beings, establishing their own hierarchy and island lifestyle that leans into violence and terror. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a seminal piece of literature, about the dangers of young people left to their own devices. Now, director Luca Guadagnino is in talks to direct a new rendition of Golding’s story.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. is set to produce the film, with the Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria director at the helm. Despite previous reports that the film would be a gender-bent version of the story, that doesn’t actually appear to be the case. However, Known Universe–a production company founded by female screenwriters Lindsey Beer, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, and Nicole Perlman–is in talks to executive produce the adaptation.
To date, there have been three other adaptations of Lord of the Flies. The first, directed by Peter Brook, was release din 1963, followed by a Filipino rendition–titled Alkitrang Dugo–in 1975. Harry Hook also directed a 1990 version of the story.
A female-led Lord of the Flies was once in talks, with Scott McGehee and David Siegel previously attached. But the choice to put girls at the center of a story largely about toxic, unguarded masculinity was controversial, as it would change the dynamics almost too much. With Guadagnino attached, we can instead expect a more faithful version that digs into those dark adolescent story elements. In fact, Guadagnino is really the perfect choice if you’ve seen Call Me By Your Name, which perfectly articulates adolescent male pain and self-discovery. If he can carry those tender elements over, and mesh them with the book’s more frightening aspects, this version of Lord of the Flies will have a lot of fascinating potential.
Images: Perigree Publishing