The BBC and Stan have revealed the first images from the forthcoming adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, adapted and directed for television by writer Jack Thorne (Adolescence, His Dark Materials) and director Marc Munden (The Mark of Cain, National Treasure).
Produced by Sex Education indie Eleven for BBC iPlayer and BBC One, the series is a co-production with Stan, which will air the drama in Australia. Sony Pictures Television will distribute the series internationally.
New images show the young cast, many of them making their professional acting debuts, filming on location in Malaysia. The castaways are played by Winston Sawyers as Ralph, Lox Pratt as Jack, David McKenna as Piggy and Ike Talbut as Simon. Thomas Connor appears as Roger, Noah and Cassius Flemming as twins Sam and Eric, Cornelius Brandreth as Maurice and Tom Page-Turner as Bill – alongside an ensemble of more than 30 boys playing the desert island camp’s ‘biguns’ and ‘littluns’.
Lord of the Flies is the story of a group of young schoolchildren who find themselves stranded on a tropical island with no adults, following a deadly plane crash. In an attempt to remain civil, the boys organise themselves, led by Ralph and supported by the group’s intellectual, Piggy. But Jack, who is in charge of signal fire duty, is more interested in hunting and vying for leadership and soon begins to draw other boys away from the order of the group and, ultimately, from hope to tragedy.
Jack Thorne’s adaptation will be the first for television. Truthful to the original novel – set in the early 1950s on an unnamed Pacific island – Thorne’s adaptation delves further into the book’s emotive themes; human nature, the loss of innocence and boyhood masculinity. Each of the four episodes is titled after a character at the core of the story – Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack – offering a subtly different perspective on the boys’ collective plight and manner in which they cope with their predicament. The series has been made with the support of Lord of the Flies author William Golding’s family.
Commissioned by Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama, Lord of the Flies is an Eleven and One Shoe Films production backed by Sony Pictures Television for BBC iPlayer, BBC One and Stan. The series is written by Jack Thorne, directed by Marc Munden, and produced by Callum Devrell-Cameron (Sex Education, Hanna). The executive producers are Joel Wilson and Jamie Campbell for Eleven, Jack Thorne for One Shoe Films, Marc Munden, Nawfal Faizullah for the BBC, and Cailah Scobie for Stan.
Lord of the Flies, first published by Faber for what was then an unknown author, has become one of the most popular books on the English curriculum for the last 70 years. William Golding won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Ensemble Biguns and Littluns (Supporting artists) with Jack (Lox Pratt) centred, and Maurice (Cornelius Brandreth)
Jack (Lox Pratt)
Ralph (Winston Sawyers) and Supporting artists
Pippa Considine
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