Netflix has ordered a series retelling of Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Western novel Lonesome Dove.
The project will reteam the streaming service with East of Eden co-showrunners Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart. Teton Ridge Entertainment owns the film and TV rights to McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove book series.
McMurtry’s 1985 bestseller follows former Texas Rangers-turned-cowboys Augustus “Gus” McRae and Woodrow Call, who embark on a fateful 3000-mile cattle drive to Montana, encountering a variety of frontier dangers along the way.
CBS adapted it as a blockbuster TV miniseries in 1989 starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Rick Schroder, Diane Lane, Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Steve Buscemi, Chris Cooper, Frederic Forrest, and Glenne Headly.
“After our singular experience on East of Eden, we are thrilled to be teaming with Netflix again, along with Teton Ridge Entertainment, to bring Larry McMurtry’s western classic to life,” Kazan and Stuart said in a statement (via Deadline).
“We come to this material with love and respect, and can’t wait to hit the trail with Gus and Call and the rest of these beloved characters. Yee-haw.”
According to Deadline, Kazan and Stuart will executive produce Lonesome Dove with Thomas Tull, Jillian Share and Jen Gorton of Teton Ridge Entertainment; Jon Jashni; late McMurtry’s longtime creative partner Diana Ossana; Curtis McMurtry of the McMurtry Estate.
Other books in McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove literary series include Streets of Laredo (1993), Dead Man’s Walk (1995), and Comanche Moon (1997), all of which were also adapted for television. There was also Lonesome Dove: The Series, which ran for two seasons in syndication in the 1990s.
Kazan and Stuart’s East of Eden launches on Netflix on October 1. It stars Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee, Joseph Zada, and Joe Anders.
