I've written recently about how Netflix seems to have found an approach (like others of the best streaming services on the planet) around adapting bestselling novels to fuel its search for new franchises and series. While many of these novels are modern page-turners, it's also clear that Netflix is happy to adapt older and more storied material, too.
It's underlined that point once again this week by unveiling a sweeping-looking trailer for East of Eden, a major new adaptation of the seminal novel by John Steinbeck from 1952. It has a huge star in a leading role, in the form of Florence Pugh, but also takes a quite surprising approach to the source material, making for a really quite interesting project.
East of Eden doesn't yet have a release date, although that teaser trailer does narrow things down a little and confirm that it'll come out this autumn. What it does show us is a whole lot of Pugh, in various costumes and parts of the novel, before revealing who she's playing: Cathy Ames.
For those who've read the book, that seems to be something of a shock, since Cathy isn't actually necessarily the main character of the novel. She's seemingly a huge part of it, though, and in many people's eyes is a fairly classic villain – so it would seem that the show's creator Zoe Kazan is deliberately trying to give her a new framing and take a different look at the story in question.
Kazan has real form, of course, as an actor herself but also having jumped to fame by writing and starring in The Big Sick back in 2017, which was a real critical darling. East of Eden is arguably her most ambitious project yet, though, not least because the novel is considered one of the masterpieces of mid-century writing in English.
The series will run to seven episodes in total, and it's not like it's going to tell Cathy's story at the exclusion of other beloved characters. The life and times of the Trask family will indeed be told in full, so I've personally got a bit of a countdown running in my head, now. I like to read great books before I watch adaptations of them, so I'd better get a move on and put East of Eden on my to-read list soon.
