Now a New Generation Can Be Afraid of Plane Crashes and the Conch With This New Trailer for a Netflix Adaptation of a Classic Novel
Sucks to your ass-mar! It’s the adaptation that all of us AP English kids wanted when we were in high school, and shockingly the first for television. Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne adapted Willian Golding’s iconic dystopian novel, Lord of the Flies, and it will be streaming on Netflix in the US on May 4.
When a group of English schoolboys crash-lands on a remote island, their attempts to survive are threatened by the darker side of human nature that takes over when society is absent and there are no rules. The boys, led by Ralph (Winston Sawyers) and supported by the group’s intellectual, Piggy (David McKenna), try to retain order despite their situation. However, Jack (Lox Pratt) challenges Ralph’s leadership, turning a tale of survival into a twisted tragedy.
The series stars McKenna, Pratt, Sawyers, and Ike Talbut, along with Thomas Connor, Cassius Flemyng, Noah Flemyng, Cornelius Brandreth, and Tom Page-Turner. For many of these boys, it is their onscreen debut thanks to an open casting call by multi-award-winning casting director Nina Gold, who is responsible for the casting on such shows as Netflix’s Baby Reindeer and HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Watch the first US trailer for Lord of the Flies now
Netflix posted the first trailer on X, announcing its release date.
Thorne reread the novel as an adult, which is what inspired him to set out creating this adaptation. Our own contemporary problem of “very complicated boys having a complicated relationship with their status and anger” is mirrored within the pages of this novel.
“As a society, we’re having a conversation right now about boys,” Thorne told Netflix. “We’re losing a generation of boys, and we’re losing it because of the hate they are ingesting — because it is an answer to their loneliness and isolation.”
The series’s four-part structure will also, hopefully, allow viewers to reestablish themselves with Golding’s characters and interact with them in new ways. Certainly, this deeper imagining of the novel will not only bring in new readers, but perhaps open the eyes of some others who either didn’t pay attention when reading it in school, or who were disinterested.
“I hope it takes people back to the book, and I hope it allows people to lean into what the book really is, in my opinion — a difficult and dangerous account of who we are and what we’re capable of,” Thorne says.
Lord of the Flies was first released by the BBC in the UK and by Stan in Australia in February.
(featured image: Netflix)
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