Zoe Kazan adapts John Steinbeck's East of Eden for Netflix starring Florence Pugh

Adaptation and background

Netflix premieres its seven-part miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden on 1 October 2026. Actor and screenwriter Zoe Kazan, who previously wrote the films Ruby Sparks and Wildlife, acts as showrunner alongside Die Hard screenwriter Jeb Stuart. Stuart Dryburgh, nominated for an Academy Award for The Piano, serves as director of photography. The series is the first screen adaptation of the novel since the 1955 feature film directed by Kazan's grandfather, Elia Kazan, who also directed A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951 and On the Waterfront in 1954. While the 1955 film, adapted by Paul Osborn and starring James Dean as Cal Trask and Raymond Massey as Adam Trask, focused exclusively on the final section of the book, this seven-hour project tracks the full multi-generational saga from the American Civil War in the 1860s through the end of the First World War.

Reinterpreting Cathy Ames and the Trask family

The production centers on Cathy Ames, also known as Kate Trask, played by 30-year-old British actor Florence Pugh. The narrative opens with a gravely injured Cathy crawling onto the Connecticut porch of brothers Adam and Charles Trask, played by Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist. Adam nurses Cathy back to health and proposes marriage, establishing the central dynamic alongside flashbacks to the brothers' youth under their military father Cyrus, portrayed by Tracy Letts. In developing the character, Pugh aimed to move beyond Steinbeck's description of Cathy as an outright monster. Speaking at a September promotional event in New York, Pugh detailed her approach to the role.

I really wanted to try and get underneath all of the decisions that she makes, and not just do the easy, cheap version of making her a villain.

Kazan, who pursued the rights to the novel after learning in 2019 that producers were seeking pitches, incorporated violent and sexual themes that had been suppressed in the 1955 film by the Hays Code. She structured the script around questions of free will, predestination, and generational trauma.

I really want to honor the book's pursuit of this question of: Do we all have some good and some evil inside us?

Character restorations and editorial cuts

The seven-hour runtime allows the production to restore the character of Lee, played by Hoon Lee. Lee, a wise servant who lives with Adam Trask and assists in raising his sons, was omitted from the 1955 film. Finding an actor for the role required an extensive search before Kazan and Pugh reviewed Lee's audition recording. To accommodate the main narrative, Kazan reduced the role of the Hamilton family, an Irish immigrant household in California's Salinas Valley led by patriarch Samuel Hamilton, played by Ciarán Hinds. Kazan had originally requested eight episodes before settling on seven. The premiere arrives as retail demand for Steinbeck's 1952 novel recorded a 250 percent increase in sales.

The incredible thing about this book is there's much treasure in it that you couldn't possibly put it all into seven hours.