Luca Guadagnino Is in Talks to Adapt Lord of the Flies

Luca Guadagnino—the man, the myth, the Italian legend behind 2017’s Oscar-winning Call Me By Your Name—is in negotiations to adapt Lord of the Flies for Warner Bros., per Variety.

The director is also in negotiations to produce alongside Marco Morabito, with the female-led Known Universe production company showing interest in picking up executive producer duties.

Guadagnino and Known Universe are reportedly planning to put a “contemporary, ultra-kinetic” spin on the classic William Golding novel and high-school literature mainstay, which tells the story of a group of cadets who crash-land on a deserted island and soon initiate social disorder.

Though the studio reacquired rights to the novel in 2017, Warner Bros. has long been the home of the Lord of the Flies IP; a subsidiary of the studio most recently adapted Golding’s novel as a feature film in 1990.

Well, wait—what happened to that female-led Lord of the Flies adaptation that the studio announced in 2017? Fortunately it looks like that gender-flipped pitch has been nixed in favor of Guadgnino’s adaptation, which is all but certainly for the best.

Variety reports a writer has yet to come onboard the project.

Earlier this month, Guadagnino announced plans to take on HBO’s We Are Who We Are miniseries, so the fleshing out the adaptation is likely not at the top of his priority list. If it somehow makes it past pre-production purgatory and sees the light of day, we expect Guadagnino’s adaptation to be just as grim-dark as his latest film credit—2018’s Suspiria remake—and land somewhere in the ballpark of EuphoriameetsSurvivor. Well, one can only hope.

Stay tuned for further updates on the project.