East of Eden
The Early Word: Netflix is betting big on Steinbeck. Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film, adapts the full novel as a seven episode limited series, and the big selling point is structural: the 1955 movie only covered the book's second half, so the Trask family's founding generations, the Civil War arc, and the full Cathy story have never been filmed. Florence Pugh plays Cathy Ames, literature's most chilling sociopath, with Christopher Abbott as Adam, Mike Faist as Charles, and Hoon Lee as the family's cook and moral center Lee, a role whitewashed out of every previous adaptation.
