Jack Thorne Talks ‘Adolescence’ & ‘Lord Of The Flies’ — Berlin

Prolific British screenwriter Jack Thorne is at this year’s Berlinale with his latest project, Lord of the Flies, which he told an audience of industry professionals during a Q&A session was shot and produced at the same time as his massive Netflix breakout, Adolescence. 

“We were working on them at the same time, and we shot them the same summer. The only difference is that Adolescence didn’t have a very long edit process,” Thorne said this morning during the session. 

“They both definitely fed into each other, particularly, a lot of Lord of the Flies fed into Adolescence, but it is about a different period of time. The difference between boys aged 10 and 12 compared to 13 and 14 is huge. All the boys in Flies are negotiating the people they’re going to become, whereas Jamie has made decisions about the person he is when we meet him in Adolescence. So there are similarities, but there are vast differences.” 

Thorne spoke at length with Berlinale Series Advisor Rowan Woods about a variety of topics during the session, including his speedy working rhythms, telling Woods that he only works on “two projects at once.” 

“That’s all I ever do,” he said. “And I need two projects because if I get stuck, I stop sleeping. I need the ability to switch because if I’m writing Adolescence and I can’t fix something, it is a nightmare. So being able to swap to Lord of the Flies, I can get a little bit of confidence back.”

Thorne also discussed Adolescence in contrast to his 2021 series Help, which also starred Stephen Graham, but struggled to find international distribution, he said, due to its local narrative. 

“The previous project I’d done with Stephen was a show called Help that was about care homes during the pandemic. It was a subject I was incredibly passionate about, and we tried really hard to get some international purchase with it,” Thorne said. 

“We were told the accents are too strong, the issue is too British, and wouldn’t work in other countries. And then suddenly, a show like Adolescence, where the accents are just as strong, if not stronger, where the issue is as British, if not more British. There are no guns involved in this story. But it still managed to travel everywhere. It was number one in Saudi Arabia for three days.” 

Help was ultimately picked up by Acorn TV for North America.

Yesterday, Deadline announced that Netflix has acquired North American rights to Lord of the Flies. The four-part series, based on William Golding’s novel of the same name, launched on the BBC in the UK and Stan in Australia on February 8. The series screened in Berlin as part of the Berlinale Specials Series programme.

Berlin runs until February 22.