If you're looking for more YA adaptations to add to your watch list, Netflix has you covered. The streamer is officially adapting Curtis Sittenfeld's 2005 coming-of-age novel into a show. On Instagram, Sittenfeld revealed it took decades and multiple failed attempts to bring Prep to the screen, but Netflix has finally made that dream a reality.
When it hits the streamer, Prep will join a handful of other YA shows, including Ginny & Georgia, Crew Girl, The Body, and more. The project will also join Netflix's long list of book-to-screen adaptations, next to titles such as Finding Her Edge, My Life With the Walter Boys, and To All the Boys I've Loved Before. According to the streamer, YA titles have amounted to over 10.4B global views since 2023.
Not only do they convert in numbers, but these coming-of-age stories also translate into engagement beyond the TV screen. Netflix confirmed to the press that YA titles make up an average of 30% of its most discussed releases on social media. Suffice it to say, Prep will keep the chatter going.
If you want every detail we know so far about the project, we have compiled it all below. Netflix's Prep series will be based on Curtis Sittenfeld’s bestselling debut novel of the same name. The book has been described as “a modern classic of adolescent angst and ambition” that deals with “social class, race, and gender politics” and has been often compared to Gossip Girl.
Netflix describes the upcoming show as a “coming-of-age story.” The official logline states that the show will follow the story of “scholarship girl Lee Fiora's high school years at Ault, a prestigious New England boarding school, and her journey to navigate friendship, crushes and class as a fish out of water among her privileged, confident classmates.” In the book, Lee Fiora hails from Indiana and is 14 when she enrols in Ault School. The book follows her from freshman to senior year. The book's synopsis teases that “Lee's experiences—complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant—coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.” Prep is being adapted into a series by Nicole Taylor, who previously also adapted David Nicholls's One Day for Netflix.
Taylor will serve as showrunner, writer, and executive producer. "There is no more acute depiction of the introspective, bookish self-conscious adolescent girl and no more truthful or excoriating take on the perils of social mobility than in Curtis Sittenfeld's beautiful first novel. I am overjoyed to be adapting for Netflix.” Original author Curtis Sittenfeld is also involved as an executive producer alongside actor Will Ferrell, as well as Jessica Elbaum, and Alix Taylor for Gloria Sanchez Productions.
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