Netflix has handed a straight-to-series order to Prep, a young adult drama based on Curtis Sittenfeld’s best-selling 2005 novel.
Nicole Taylor, whose credits include One Day, will adapt the book and serve as showrunner. She is also executive producing alongside Sittenfeld and Gloria Sanchez Productions’ Will Ferrell, Jessica Elbaum and Alix Taylor.
The story follows Lee Fiora, a scholarship student from Indiana who enrolls at the prestigious Ault school in Massachusetts. As Lee moves through high school, she finds herself navigating life as an outsider among classmates with greater privilege.
The series will retain the novel’s focus on adolescence, social mobility and the experience of trying to find a place within an unfamiliar world. Published in 2005, Prep became a bestseller and received critical acclaim.
A Long-Held Adaptation Ambition
For Nicole Taylor, the Netflix series represents the realization of a creative goal she has carried for two decades.
“Prep is my all time favorite novel, and I have longed to adapt it for the entire 20 years since I first read it and found myself reflected uncannily back,” Taylor said in a statement.
She continued: “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.”
Sittenfeld also praised the adaptation and the team that has moved the project forward, singling out both Alix Taylor and Nicole Taylor’s work.
“I’m overjoyed that Netflix is making Prep as a TV show — the 22-year wait was worth it!” the author said. “Alix Taylor at Gloria Sanchez has guided the project forward with such intelligence and enthusiasm, and Nicole Taylor’s scripts are truly brilliant.”
Sittenfeld added that the new interpretation has offered her a different perspective on the original material.
“Nicole’s adaptation makes me understand my own novel, and myself, better,” she said. “My 51-year-old self can’t wait to see what they do with this story of privilege, longing, and teen angst.”
Sittenfeld’s Screen Adaptation History
Prep appears positioned to become the first screen adaptation of one of Sittenfeld’s novels to make it to audiences.
Other books by the author have attracted development interest. New Line and Hello Sunshine are developing a film based on Romantic Comedy, Sittenfeld’s 2024 novel.
Hulu also pursued a series adaptation of Rodham in 2020. That novel imagines a life in which Hillary Rodham never marries Bill Clinton, but the proposed television project did not advance beyond development.
ShowBiz Take
The straight-to-series order is the key distinction for Prep. Unlike an adaptation that remains only in development, Netflix has committed to the show as part of its expanding YA slate.
The project also arrives with unusually strong personal investment from both its author and showrunner. Taylor has described a 20-year desire to bring the novel to television, while Sittenfeld has publicly endorsed the scripts and said the adaptation has deepened her understanding of her own work.
At the center of the series is a character whose scholarship places her inside an elite environment without erasing her sense of being an outsider. That setup gives Netflix’s adaptation a defined dramatic foundation: Lee’s high school experience unfolds against the intertwined pressures of privilege, longing, social mobility and teenage self-consciousness.