Netflix has ordered a new series adaptation of Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning Western novel that became the basis for one of the most acclaimed miniseries in television history. Deadline broke the news this week that the streamer has greenlit the project straight to series.

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Key Points

• Netflix ordered a full series based on McMurtry’s original 1985 novel, not a remake of the 1989 CBS miniseries.
• Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart, who previously worked together on Netflix’s “East of Eden,” will co-showrun, write, and executive produce.
• Teton Ridge Entertainment and members of the McMurtry estate, including Diana Ossana and Curtis McMurtry, are also producing.
• The 1989 CBS miniseries starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones and won a Peabody Award for reviving the television Western.

The novel follows two aging former Texas Rangers, Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Woodrow Call, on one last cattle drive from the Rio Grande up to Montana. It’s the kind of sprawling, character-driven story that made McMurtry’s book a critical sensation in the first place, and it’s the same source material the acclaimed 1989 miniseries drew from, not a continuation of that adaptation’s specific plot choices.

Kazan and Stuart previously collaborated on Netflix’s East of Eden adaptation, and TheWrap reports the pair said in a statement, “After our singular experience on ‘East of Eden,’ we are thrilled to be teaming with Netflix again” to adapt the “western classic.”

The original 1989 CBS miniseries has cast a long shadow over every Western that followed it. Duvall and Jones starred alongside Danny Glover, Diane Lane, and Anjelica Huston, and the production won a Peabody Award that credited the show with proving, in the committee’s words, that the miniseries format was not “outmoded” and that the television Western was not a “dead form.” The Peabody citation also singled out the chemistry between Duvall and Jones as work that “reached out to viewers and captured their imagination and affection.”

McMurtry eventually expanded the story into a four-book series, writing two prequels and a sequel around his original 1985 novel, and CBS followed the 1989 miniseries with several more television productions drawn from those later books. Lonesome Dove itself remains the entry point most readers and viewers know best, and the one carrying the most weight into this new adaptation.

No premiere date, cast, or episode count has been announced. But for a novel that already produced one of the most decorated Westerns to ever air, Netflix is betting there’s still trail left to ride.