Netflix’s new take on John Steinbeck’s 1952 book, East of Eden, starring Florence Pugh and Joseph Zalda, hasn’t even hit the platform yet, and already the streaming kings are looking for their next definitive American prose to adapt into a miniseries. It’s been confirmed that Netflix have ordered a TV series take on the 1985 Larry McMurtry book, Lonesome Dove, with hopes this adaptation can become an ongoing series rather than a limited one.

Lonesome Dove is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centring on two former Texas Rangers called Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call in the mid-to-late 1870s. The pair plan to take on a goodbye cattle drive starting at the Rio Grande and ending in Montana’s wilderness, all for the sake of one of the American novel’s most cherished thematic values: dreams.

The protagonists come across numerous additional characters and events, all designed to execute Lonesome Dove’s thematic tapestry of male friendship, journeys of the self, justice, and the meaning of one’s life in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave during its time.

Additionally, McMurtry’s book has sold over 4 million copies since its publication, spawning a book series of three follow-ups: 1993’s Streets of Laredo, 1995’s Dead Man’s Walk and 1997’s Comanche Moon, with the series chronologically starting with Dead Man’s Walk in the 1840s and ending with Streets of Laredo in the early 1890s. The book was the author’s eleventh novel, following 1983’s The Desert Rose and before 1987’s Flim Flam.

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February saw Teton Ridge Entertainment purchase the rights to the book franchise, with East of Eden showrunners Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart being hired in April. The book was first adapted for the silver screen in 1989, directed by Simon Wincer for CBS, and starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Diane Lane, and Anjelica Huston. This first Lonesome Dove series earned eighteen nods at the 1989 Emmy Awards, winning seven.

Thomas Tull, Jillian Share, Jen Gorton, Jon Jashni, Diana Ossana and Curtis McMurtry will share executive producer credits on the series re-telling for Netflix, after an initial “complex web of necessary rights” was cleared of gaps for the streaming platform to gain production.

Meanwhile, East of Eden focuses on two bloodlines, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, as their stories intertwine. The series adaptation will also star Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Joe Andres, Hoon Lee, Tracy Letts, Martha Plimpton and Ciarán Hinds.

Its most famous adaptation was the 1955 feature film of the same title by Elia Kazan and starring James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey, Burl Ives, Richard Davalos, and Jo Van Fleet.

East of Eden hits Netflix on 1st October. 

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