Patrick Ness, the author of the YA best-sellers 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 helm the adaptation and produce with producing partner Marco Morabito. Known Universe, the production company founded by tentpole writers Lindsey Beer, Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Nicole Perlman, is also producing.
Ness will go about adapting the influential 1954 novel by William Golding that tells 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, Lord of the Flies sees the survivors split into two groups, led by Ralph and Jack. While Ralph’s group tries to maintain some semblance of order, Jack’s slowly falls into savagery and idol worship; violence and tragedy follows.
The studio at one point was developing a female-skewing version of Lord of the 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 A 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 for the 2016 film version of A Monster Calls, which starred Lewis MacDougall, Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Liam Neeson. He also worked on Lionsgate’s upcoming adaptation of Chaos Walking, which stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, and created and wrote the 2016 Doctor Who spinoff Class.
Ness is repped by Michelle Kass Associates.
