Flies remake piques interest
TORONTO — A proposed film remake of Lord of the Flies that would feature girls instead of boys has piqued Margaret Atwood’s interest.
The Canadian author says the film would have to acknowledge the different ways girls and boys relate, but she suggested it wouldn’t be hard to find themes a modern-day audience could relate to.
“You hear a lot about bullying in school — is it different? It’s certainly amplified with smartphones and social media. But is it essentially different?” said Atwood, riding high from a critically acclaimed TV adaptation of her 1985 book The
Handmaid’s Tale, which just scored eight Emmy Awards.
The CanLit legend mused on the possibility of a genderswapped Lord of the Flies at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, where diversity issues loomed large amid an especially female-weighted slate.
Word came last month that Warner Bros. plans to tackle a new version of the iconic William Golding novel. The reboot would follow several gender-swapping overhauls in Hollywood, including the recent Ghostbusters remake. Upcoming projects include the
Ocean’s Eleven spinoff Ocean’s Eight with Sandra Bullock and Rihanna, and a female-centred
Splash in which Channing Tatum plays a merman who falls in love with a woman, played by Jillian Bell.
Peter Brook brought it to the big screen in 1963, and Harry Hook directed a 1990 version starring Balthazar Getty. The new genderflipped incarnation would be written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose past films include What Maisie Knew and Bee Season.
When word of an all-female film emerged in August, critics immediately took to social media to question the plan, many of them dismissing the possibility that a story about male aggression could be cast with girls. Others took issue with the project being helmed by two white men.
Atwood and screenwriter Sarah Polley, who were at TIFF with their TV adaptation of Atwood’s book Alias Grace, found the idea intriguing.
“It’s worth exploring but I think people have to recognize that gangs of little girls and gangs of little boys do behave differently,” said Atwood, whose novel Cat’s Eye traced the cruelties of a gang of schoolgirls. “I was a camp counsellor with both.
“The little boys would form hierarchies based on the biggest, the strongest, the most accomplished at some things, which (was) baseball cards. And they would arrange themselves in that period and it would be pretty stable. Like, it wouldn’t change much.
“Whereas the little girls of the same age, it was like the Byzantine court. You couldn’t tell why Miss Popularity was popular. She could be pulled down at any minute, for some reason it was not clear.”
Veteran actress Glenn Close agreed, expecting the text would have to undergo a significant overhaul to work for female characters.
“It’s a totally different creature, so whoever’s making a girl version of Lord of the Flies, don’t expect a line-by-line (adaptation). You can’t do that,” said Close.
And although girls are very different from boys, Close pointed out middle-school females can be “lethal” in their social cliques.
Canadian director Michelle MacLaren was also interested in the idea.
“Obviously, Lord of the Flies is about a group of boys. For me, it is about humans,” she said. “So it’s interesting. I don’t know what the female take on that is. I’m very curious.”