Patrick Ness, the author of YA bestsellers Chaos Walking and A Monster Calls, has been tapped to adapt Lord of the Flies for Warner Bros.
Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino is on board to direct the adaptation and produce with producing partner Marco Morabito.
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Ness will go about adapting the influential 1954 novel by William Golding that told of a group of British boys stranded on a deserted jungle island. A dark allegory on the primal urges shallowly buried beneath humanity’s skin, Flies sees the survivors split into two groups, led by boys Ralph and Jack, respectively. While Ralph’s group tries to maintain some semblance of order, Jack’s slowly falls into savagery and idol worship. Violence and tragedy follows.
Known Universe, the production company founded by tentpole writers Lindsey Beer, Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Nicole Perlman, is executive producing.
The studio at one point was developing a female-skewing version of Flies but has changed course and is aiming to hew closer to the original novel with this feature project.
Ness has twice won the Carnegie Medal, which recognizes literary work for children and young adult, for Monsters of Men, his third book in the Chaos Walking trilogy, and Monster Calls. Both stories focused on young adults and children facing impossibly adult situations and forced to take on unbearable burdens.
Ness wrote the screenplay the screen version of Monster Calls, which starred Lewis MacDougall, Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Liam Neeson. He also worked on Lionsgate’s adaptation of Chaos, which stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, and created and wrote the 2016 Doctor Who spinoff Class.
Ness is repped by Michelle Kass Associates.
