Netflix Snaps Up Jack Thorne's 'Lord of the Flies'

It’s unlikely there’s a British writer more in demand these days than Jack Thorne. Even if you haven’t seen his Emmy-winning Adolescence, you’ve almost certainly heard about it, and the larger conversation it raised about toxic masculinity, incel culture, and the pressures young boys are constantly asked to navigate in our modern world.

Thorne is shockingly prolific, with upcoming projects ranging from Sam Mendes’s quartet of Beatles biopics to an adaptation of Suzanne Heywood’s memoir Wavewalker and the third installment of the Enola Holmes franchise. And now Netflix has snapped up his latest BBC series, a first-of-its-kind television adaptation of William Golding’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Lord of the Flies.

A cynical, cautionary tale of young boys and the capacity for violence they carry within them, it’s a story most people likely know the bones of, even if they’ve never read it. The book follows a group of British kids who are stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after an airplane crash. As they struggle to survive, their attempts at civilizational order rapidly dissolve into factions, leading to chaos and violence.

Here is the series’ synopsis.

Lord of the Flies is the story of schoolboys stranded on a tropical island with no adults, following a deadly plane crash. In an attempt to remain civil they organise themselves, led by Ralph and supported by the group’s intellectual, Piggy. But when Jack becomes more interested in hunting and vying for leadership, he soon begins to draw other boys away from the group and, ultimately, from hope to tragedy.

The series’ cast comprises over 30 young actors, most of whom are unknowns making their professional onscreen debuts. Each of its four episodes is titled after one of the characters at the core of the story: Ralph (Winston Saywers), the group’s initial leader; Jack (Lox Pratt), leader of a rival faction; Piggy (David McKenna), a believer in order who is the brains behind many of Ralph’s best ideas; and Simon (Ike Talbut), the book’s moral center.

(He’s literally a Christ allegory, because Golding is many things, but subtle is not one of them.) 

Thorne wrote all four episodes, which were directed by Marc Munden (Help) and produced by Callum Devrell-Cameron (Sex Education). Executive producers include Munden, Thorne for One Shoe Films, Joel Wilson and Jamie Campbell for Eleven, Nawfal Faizullah for the BBC, and Cailah Scobie for Stan.

Netflix has not yet set a premiere date for Lord of the Flies, but here’s hoping it arrives sooner rather than later.