Yesterday, it was announced that Warner Brothers would be remaking Lord of the Flies with an all-female cast, but written and directed by two men.
Therein lies your first problem: two grown men telling the story of girls is problematic.
Secondly, given that William Golding's original1954 novel explored how the savagery, machismo, and competitive masculinity leads to the downfall of the young boys stranded on an island, it doesn't feel quite right to recast it as women, does it?
The Internet has rightly pointed out the same story with all female survivors is implausible and misses the point. Mainly because, well, if women were left to survive on an island it wouldn't end in disaster.
As writer Roxane Gay (who's also previously written for ELLE) noted, 'an all women remake of Lord of the Flies makes no sense because... the plot of that book wouldn't happen with all women.'
Screenwriter Gennifer Hutchinson also weighed in saying, 'A. This is a story about toxic masculinity specifically, so this seems tricky. B. I hope they have some women on the creative end.'
According to Deadline, the two guys behind the project are Scott McGehee and David Siegel (What Maisie Knew.
'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 said.
McGehee said they were 'taking the opportunity to tell it in a way it hasn't been told before, with girls rather than boys, [which] shifts things in a way that might help people see the story anew.'
He also said their all-girl version 'breaks away from some of the conventions, the ways we think of boys and aggression ... It is a great adventure story, real entertainment, but it has a lot of meaning embedded in it as well.'
Read the responses below.
Looking for an all-female Lord of the Flies? Try reading these books.
