adaptations

Luca Guadagnino in Talks to Direct Lord of the Flies, Now Without Gender-Swapping

Photo: Mondadori Portfolio/Mondadori via Getty Images

Lord of the Flies might be coming straight off of a high-school sophomore’s bookshelf and onto a screen near you, courtesy of Luca Guadagnino. According to Variety, the man who brought us a luxurious coming-of-age story somewhere in northern Italy, is in talks to direct a terrifying coming-of-age somewhere stuck in the Pacific Ocean. There are no writers attached to adapt the William Golding novel yet, so it’s unclear where this lies in Guadagnino’s slate of upcoming projects. He’s currently working on a miniseries for HBO, a film based on Bob Dylan’s 1975 album Blood on the Tracks, and, of course, the Call Me By Your Name sequel, Find Me. If you never did the required reading in school: Lord of the Flies watches a group of young British boys as they devolve into savagery on an uninhabited island after a plane crash. In 2017, there was talk of a gender-swapped version of the film, but someone probably realized that girls would just create an organized society until they were rescued and scrapped the idea. So, no schoolgirls this time, but if Guadagnino has his way, there will be a role for Ms. Dakota Johnson somehow.

Luca Guadagnino in Talks to Direct Lord of the Flies Movie