Anyone who went to an all-girls school and/or has an opinion on them, rejoice! Lord of the Flies is getting a Hollywood makeover, but also a gender flip, as the story will be about a bunch of young girls, instead of a bunch of young boys, stuck on an island.
According to Deadline, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, two men, might we add, have signed a deal with Warner Brothers to remake the 1954 novel. It’ll be the third English-language film adaptation of William Golding’s story, which has long been treated as a powerful explorations of human ethics. It has also long been cited as an example of ‘boys will be boys’ sorts of behaviour. You know, the sort that Melania Trump used to excuse then-59 year old Donald Trump’s behaviour when he made those ‘Grab ‘em by the pussy’ remarks.
Criticism of Lord of the Flies come in on none other than Twitter, where users have complained that girls would never do what the boys in Lord of the Flies do, because girls simply aren’t socialised that way. But David Siegel said: ‘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.
‘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.’
Just in case these two guy directors need a bit of help in how to put the film together, here are five ways they could take the film, for better or for worse.
1. The ‘women are totally hysterically mad and all you have to do to prove it is put a bunch of them together without sensible men to police them’ angle
See: Without Men, the 2011 Eva Longoria film she made between series of Desperate Housewives. Set somewhere in Latin America (it didn't seem to matter to the filmmakers where), the women were depicted as hysterical messes. This isn't always bad; the superb 1947 thriller *Black Narcissus *does the same. The difference, though, is 1947 was quite a long time ago and 2011 wasn't. Also, there was no gratituous and men-grabby lesbianism.
2. The 'Taylor Swift’s Girl-Squad' angle
This will involve a cast of completely random mates, vying for popularity within the group all wearing ‘I <3 TS T-shirts. They will have very little in common with each other bar their polite competition with one another.
3. The ‘silly nonsense’ angle
Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy and a whole slew of other female comedians who make us chuckle on SNL will be drafted in to make this whole story a lot less stressful, and a lot more a pastiche on all those survivalist Bear Grylls-style TV programmes that so dominate our lives that you’ll know grown men (and women!) who fling themselves around muddy fields in Wandsworth all weekend in the name of prepping for ‘Tough Mudder’ challenges.
This isn’t only called the ‘silly nonsense’ angle because of the silly banter of the prospective film, but because a whole bunch of blokes are going to get upset that a fictional film set in the midst of a nuclear war will be so radical as to show - shock! - girls being stranded on an island then arguing, instead of boys being stranded on an island and then arguing. If you don’t believe us, grown men got upset that Ghostbusters, a film about people hunting ghosts, was remade with an all-female cast. The trailer above? It has one million down-votes on YouTube to 300,000 up-votes!
4. The ‘Sugababes’ angle
The top dog in the beach-side camp gains power via three younger members of her party, but then replaces them one by one until none of the original lieutenants are in power anymore. At one point, two of the lieutenants make up their own language so they can talk to each other in front of the third without her understanding what they’re saying.
5. The ‘LOST’ angle
The whole thing will be a beautifully-shot over-long musing on life, featuring model-beautiful people in natural jungle, beach and mountain settings as well as scary-not-scary apparent threats. Ridiculous coincidences and gaping chasmic plotholes will feature heavily, yet it will all lapped up by nerds on forums. The ending will be a phoned in cop-out and most people would have walked out of the cinema by then.
Take your pick, lads!
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.