A new adaptation of Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove is headed to Netflix

The 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning novel was last adapted for a 1989 series starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Danny Glover.

What is Lonesome Doves about

The Netflix press release summarises the novel so:

The epic drama follows Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, retired Texas Rangers who embark on one final, perilous cattle drive from the Rio Grande to the untamed wilderness of Montana. Packed with unrequited longing, unbreakable friendship, brutal frontier justice, and an unwavering pursuit of a meaningful life, the sweeping odyssey treks across the American West of the 19th century — and introduces an unforgettable cast of characters along the way.

Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart as co-showrunners of the new series. This marks Kazan and Stuart’s latest project with Netflix, following their forthcoming adaptation of East of Eden, starring Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, and Mike Faist. (You can stream the series on October 1st).

If you aren’t familiar with McMurty’s work, we also learn the author, who died in 2021, was a prolific and beloved writer. In addition to Lonesome Dove, which spent more than five consecutive months on the New York Times bestseller list, he also wrote best-selling novels that were adapted into classic films, including Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show, and co-wrote the Academy Award–winning film Brokeback Mountain, which was based on a short story by Annie Proulx.

We expect a lot more on this as and when development progresses. If the series is still in development, we imagine filming next year with release in 2028. Of course more may have already been done.