Lord of the Flies, the book you were probably forced to read at school, is getting the gender-swap treatment.
While the William Golding novel, which was published in 1954, has become a film twice already (you probably had to watch one of them after reading the book for class), Deadline reports that the latest effort will swap out the band of boys for a group of girls. Other than that, the writer and director, Scott McGehee and Evan Siegel, plan on sticking to the source material.
"We want to do a very faithful, but contemporised adaptation of the book, but our idea was to do it with all girls rather than boys," Siegel told Deadline, adding that he felt that a remake would be timely. "It is a timeless story that is especially relevant today, with the interpersonal conflicts and bullying, and the idea of children forming a society and replicating the behaviour they saw in grownups before they were marooned."
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While we're definitely here for more female-centred films, there's something very odd about two white men helming a film that puts girls in what basically amounts to a battle royale against each other. The book, which is required reading in many school districts, is often used as a way to explore the end of civilisation and "the darkness of man's heart." It's also probably the root of all the dystopian teen novels that have popped up in the last decade.
Vulture points out that there are plenty of female-fronted movies out there that capture the essence of Lord of the Flies, like Heathers, Jawbreaker, and Drop Dead Gorgeous, only they don't involve pigs' heads on sticks or a plane crash marooning an entire middle school class.
Here's hoping that the new flick keeps that whole talk-only-when-you've-got-the-conch-shell thing.
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