Netflix has just released the first trailer for their adaptation of East of Eden, a novel by John Steinbeck, from showrunners Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart.
The limited series will span generations of the Trask family starring Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee, Joseph Zada, Joe Anders and Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames (whose perspective the show follows). The book is regarded as one of Steinbeck’s most personal works as it’s believed to be based on his own family, fictionalised on page and screen as the Hamiltons, led by Samuel (Ciarán Hinds).
See More Trailers
As a result of Steinbeck’s attachment to the material, there’s a wealth of really interesting primary sources regarding his creative process, which Kazan explained for Tudum: “There’s this incredible resource that I used, which is that Steinbeck wrote longhand in a big journal. On the right-hand side of the journal, he would write his pages for the day of the book, and then on the left-hand side, he would write letters to his editor.”
In the trailer, we catch glimpses of three generations of the Trask family, from patriarch Cyrus (Tracy Letts), to his sons Adam (Abbott) and Charles (Faist) and to Adam’s sons Aron (Anders) and Cal (Zada). At its core, the book tells the story of what makes humans choose to be monsters and what makes them choose to be human again. “Our future isn’t determined by our past,” the Trasks’ loyal manservant Lee (Lee) says in the trailer. “Whatever you do, it will be you who does it.”
The show will be directed by Garth Davis and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Antoine Douaihy, Zack Hayden, Steve Golin, David Levine, Jill Arthur are executive producing alongside Pugh, Kazan and Stuart.
East of Eden arrives on Netflix on October 1st
