Chase Stokes Shares BTS Details About Filming Netflix's Uglies

At a time when The Hunger Games and Divergent were whipping up frenzies in middle schools everywhere, Uglies by author Scott Westerfeld joined the canon of beloved YA dystopian fiction. Now, the almost 20-year-old book is getting the Netflix treatment with Joey King, of The Kissing Booth and The Act fame, as producer and star. Here’s everything you need to know about Netflix’s adaptation of Uglies, including the cast as well as predictions about its release date and trailer.

Uglies follows teenager Tally Youngblood as she navigates a dystopian society where each citizen is required to be surgically altered to fit society’s beauty standard at age 16. When her new bestie, Shay, rejects becoming “Pretty,” Tally has to decide where she stands: rebel or law-abiding citizen.

Like many Gen Zers, King was obsessed with Uglies as a kid. According to Deadline, it was her advocacy for the book that got Netflix and Westerfeld to say yes to the adaptation. In an Instagram story after the film was announced in 2020, King gushed over the opportunity to bring the book to life and threw in a couple references to fan-favorite memories from the book too. “Uglies really shaped my love of reading when I was younger ... I might have some SpagBol tonight to celebrate. Let’s go to the Rusty Ruins my fellow Uglies fanatics,” King wrote.

Joining King in her passion project is Chase Stokes, best known for playing John B on Netflix’s Outer Banks, who is also a longtime fan of the book. “I actually had Uglies as a summer reading book, so I had read it and and then did the traditional book report on it,” he tells Elite Daily soon after filming on the project wrapped. “I think anytime you get to revisit a book, there's just something really exciting about the anticipation of knowing what's coming on the forthcoming pages and revisiting characters that you fell in love with.”

Uglies Cast

King is not only playing the main character, Tally Youngblood, but she’s also producing the project with her new production company, All The King’s Horses.

The other announced cast members include Stokes, Laverne Cox, Brianne Tju from Amazon Prime’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Famous in Love actor Keith Powers. Netflix has yet to reveal which character each actor will play.

Interestingly, Grey’s Anatomy showrunner and executive producer, Krista Vernoff, wrote the script for Uglies, which hopefully means fans can expect high drama and intense romantic tension.

Uglies Predicted Release Date

Details about the YA adaptation’s production has been kept way under wraps. In mid-December 2021, the cast took to social media to announce the end of Uglies filming with a few cryptic photos and videos. Beyond that, nothing more has been released.

Because of all the secrecy, the release date of Uglies is still a mystery. Based on the production schedule, WhatsOnNetflix.com predicts a late 2022 release.

Uglies Trailer

After filming wrapped in December, Westerfeld tweeted that editing was about to start, but no trailer has been released yet. Fans can probably expect to see a trailer once post-production is over. As King wrote in her most recent Instagram caption about the project, “See you in Uglyville!”