Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Now this is a good idea. I adore William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It was one of two books that we were required to read in school that I actually fell in love with (the other being Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451).
There have been two very good film adaptations of this story already, the 1963 black and white classic by Peter Brook and the more brutal 1990 version by Harry Hook. It seems like every generation needs their cinematic retelling of this story and I'm totally okay with that.
I'm doubly okay with this new version gender-swapping the cast. Instead of an all-boys trapped on the island premise it's an all-girls trapped on an island. Sure, boys can be more warlike and tribal, but they don't have the market cornered on chaos by any means and having this new telling give us a slightly different perspective can only help this story feel fresh.
The team behind What Maisie Knew and Bee Season are adapting the material with this very interesting change, per Deadline. Scott McGehee and David Siegel will begin writing immediately.
I mentioned this story being a generational thing. The '60s film came along at a time when society itself seemed to be tearing apart. Political assassinations, Civil Rights protest and the Vietnam conflict were dividing us, so this story of innocents becoming corrupted resonated there. In the '90s version the focus seemed much more on showing the brutality, giving a more modern in your face Post-Rambo look at the story.
Gender-swapping the boys to girls gives a lot of room for this generation's version of the Lord of the Flies story to comment on today's issues. This feels very timely and if done right can really be something special. What do you folks think?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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