All-Female "Lord of the Flies" Adaptation

Overview

All-Female Lord of the Flies Adaptation refers to the response toward the reports that the Warner Bros. movie production studio was pursuing an adaptation of Lord of the Flies starring an all-female cast. After the announcement, people complained that casting women in the film missed the point of the source material, which they assert is about toxic masculinity.

Background

On August 30th, 2017, Deadline^[1] reported that Scott McGehee and David Siegel signed a deal with Warner Bros. to produce an all-female adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. The book follows a group of boys who get stranded on a deserted island and resort to violence to control the group. On the adaptation, the filmmakers said,

"We want to do a very faithful but contemporized adaptation of the book, but our idea was to do it with all girls rather than boys," said David Siegel. "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 behavior they saw in grownups before they were marooned."

"Taking the opportunity to tell it in a way it hasn’t been told before, with girls rather than boys, is that it shifts things in a way that might help people see the story anew," said McGehee. "It breaks away from some of the conventions, the ways we think of boys and aggression. People still talk about the movie and the book from the standpoint of pure storytelling. It is a great adventure story, real entertainment, but it has a lot of meaning embedded in it as well. We’ve gotten to think about this awhile as the rights were worked out, and we’re super eager to put pen to paper.”

Developments

The response to the announcement was largely negative. Most expressed the belief that Lord of the Flies is a book and film about toxic masculinity and, therefore, does not work with women.

Shortly after the article published, Twitter ^[2] user @froynextdoor tweeted a response, saying "uhm lord of the flies is about the replication of systemic masculine toxicity every 9th grader knows this u can read about it on sparknotes." The post (shown below) received more than 12,500 retweets and 32,200 likes in less than 24 hours.

Many on Twitter made similar comments. Through out the day, Twitter users posted their apprehension towards the project, asserting that it was not in the vein of the book or original film (examples below). Many described that it was an affront to the main point of the book.

That day, Redditor ^[7] kylemcg posted about the film in the /r/NotTheOnion. The post received more than 960 points (91% upvoted) and 320 comments.

Additionally, there were an array of op-ed and opinion pieces about the announcement, while several news outlets reported on the outrage online. Such outlets include The Guardian,^[3] Teen Vogue,^[4] The New York Times,^[5] Vulture^[6] and more.

Search Interest

External References