Florence Pugh is all over our screens at the moment – she's in big movies and heralded TV series, crossing both as Yelena in Black Widow and Hawkeye. Now she's attached to star in and co-produce a miniseries adaptation of East Of Eden, which has Zoe Kazan on board to write and executive produce for Netflix.
The series will follow John Steinbeck's classic novel, sketching an intimate portrait of the Trask family against the backdrop of huge historical forces and will explore themes of trauma and repair; love and betrayal; duty and free will.
Netflix grabbed the project after a bidding war and has the project in early development. Kazan, though, is excited to get going. "I fell in love with East Of Eden when I first read it, in my teens. Since then, adapting Steinbeck’s novel – the great, sprawling, three-generational entirety of it – has been my dream. More than anything, I have wanted to give full expression to the novel’s astonishing, singular antiheroine, Cathy Ames," Kazan says in a statement picked up by Deadline. "Florence Pugh is our dream Cathy; I can’t imagine a more thrilling actor to bring this character to life. Writing this limited series over the last two years has been the creative highpoint of my life. I hope that with our partners at Netflix, Anonymous Content, and Endeavor Content, we can do justice to this material – and shed new light on it for a twenty-first century audience."
There's a Kazan family connection to the story already – Zoe’s grandfather, Elia Kazan, directed a cinematic take on the tale in 1955 for Warners.