Netflix‘s all-time top 10 list for English-language series has a new entrant: I Will Find You, the streamer’s latest adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel, claims the No. 10 spot with 101.9 million views worldwide.
The limited series starring Sam Worthington and Britt Lower — in which Worthington’s character, David Burroughs, breaks out of prison after learning the son he was wrongfully convicted of killing might still be alive — needed just 39 days to move into the all-time list. With 7.3 million views last week, I Will Find You also reached the top ranking for the fifth week since its June 18 premiere. It’s the first English-language series to spend five weeks in at No. 1 since season two of Wednesday in September 2025 (the most recent seasons of Stranger Things and Bridgerton topped the charts for four weeks each).
I Will Find You is the second series based on a Coben book to make Netflix’s all-time top 10. Fool Me Once, released in January 2024, was on the chart for a while with 98 million views over its first 13 weeks (the cutoff point for Netflix’s all-time lists), but it has since been bumped down a few spots. With seven-plus weeks still left before I Will Find You hits the cutoff, the series will likely end up a few places higher on the list.
“It’s a tremendous thrill. It is never not a thrill for me,” Coben told The Hollywood Reporter about I Will Find You’s breakout success. “It is never not something that I don’t stop and appreciate. I’m ridiculously grateful. And all it does is make me want to work even harder on the next one.”
A few more stats: Since Netflix began releasing global top 10 lists five years ago, shows based on Coben’s works have made the worldwide charts 41 times and reached the top 10 in 93 countries. Since the start of 2023, Coben’s shows have amassed more than 450 million views on Netflix. The steamer, which has a partnership with Coben dating back to 2018, has adapted 13 of his novels as series (in the United States, U.K., France, Spain, Poland and Argentina), with more to come. On deck is Myron Bolitar, based on Coben’s 12-book series about a sports agent (played by Colin Woodell); it started production this week, with David E. Kelley and Kyle Long as co-showrunners.
Also, since the trailer for I Will Find You was released on June 1, sales of the 2023 novel have spiked: According Grand Central Publishing, book sales in the past two months are six times higher than they had been prior to that.
THR spoke separately with Coben and I Will Find You showrunner Robert Hull about the show’s success, the adaptation process and why Coben’s work has traveled so well across the world.
Robert, how did you become involved in I Will Find You?
ROBERT HULL First and foremost, I’ve been a huge fan of Harlan’s work since probably the first novel of the Myron Bolitar series. I was actually chasing that series for a while. And when I finally got on the phone, Harlan told me that unfortunately, the Myron series was locked up, but he had another great idea for a show, and he pitched the basic premise of [I Will Find You]. I just flipped. I was like, I can’t believe I’m getting a Harlan idea before anyone else. He basically said, do you want to work on this together? So I went from chasing a series to getting to work on a series with Harlan from the ground up. It was everything you could possibly dream of as a writer.
So you started work on the show before the novel was published?
HULL He came up with the idea, and we wanted to take it off the table as quick as I could — because once it became a bestseller, the chances of me getting it were going to be reduced somewhat. I basically skipped the line. We took it to Netflix before he was even finished with the novel and said, “This is what we’re going to do.” The original goal, which was way too ambitious, was the book and the series would drop at the same time. But Harlan is so ridiculously prolific that he finished the book in six or eight months, before we could really even get past the pilot. But it was such an incredible process to watch him turn out that novel as we were breaking the series and to be able to go back and forth with it.
Harlan, how involved do you get in the adaptations of your novels?
HARLAN COBEN When we’re talking about the English-language ones, I’m heavily involved casting, working on the scripts, outlining all the stuff. With the foreign language ones, less so, because we are translating and there’s a little bit of a delay. I can’t be as immediate. I get the rushes pretty much every day, and I watch them almost every day. [On I Will Find You], the actors all have my phone number, and so does Robby and whoever else when they need me. I try to visit set when I can, but, you know, in this case, we really were in very good hands with Robby, Steve [Lilien] and Bryan [Wynbrandt] sort of showrunning as a team. But yes, I do like to be involved. This one was unusual. I’m sure it’s happened, but not with me [before] where I pitched the idea of the series, and then I said, well, I kind of wrote this out already. I’d like to try to write this as a book. I wrote the book faster than they ended up writing the pilot. But I think it helped give us a sense of where we were going with the story, feeling it out.
Sam Worthington and Britt Lower in ‘I Will Find You.’
Christos Kalohoridis/NETFLIX
How tightly do you hold onto what you write versus what ends up on screen?
COBEN All I care about is what’s going to make the best TV series. One of my favorite quotes comes from James M. Cain, who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. An interviewer asked him, don’t you hate what Hollywood has done to your books? And he said, they’ve done nothing to my books. They’re right there on the shelf. Whatever I do in a TV adaptation doesn’t change one word of the books. I think often the worst adaptations are overly worried about fidelity to the book. I don’t really worry about it. The book’s pretty good. It’s a good story, so we’re gonna follow that. But if I have to change something, I will. Also, when I’m writing a book, I don’t think about the TV adaptation at all. I think it’s the kiss of death for a writer to think, “Ooh, this is gonna make a really great TV series.” As a novelist, that’s the worst thing you can do. I don’t mind eventually changing everything. A novel is a singular pleasure. A TV series is a different kind of pleasure.
HULL The core of this story always remained intact. What I responded to originally was this idea of a man being able to change the past, being able to find his son. Because unlike most fugitive stories — where it’s, I break out of prison and I prove my innocence — Harlan’s idea had nothing to do with that. David doesn’t care about his innocence. He only cares about finding his son.
The challenge in adapting this book, like so many novels in first person, is I don’t think David gets out of prison in the book until [about] page 100 of a 300-page novel. So you’re talking about the first third of the book being first-person narrative. When you’re reading, it’s great because you’re really inside his head and you’re learning all these things. But for a television show, we needed to get him out in 45 minutes. We wanted to get him out [by the end of] the pilot and really put the pedal down. Also in the book, David and Rachel aren’t really together for a lot of it. They come together in the very end. But when you start breaking the story, especially when we cast somebody like Britt Lower [as Rachel], you want it to be a true two-hander. Bryan Wynbrandt and Steven Lilien, my two executive producers and co-writers on all the episodes, and I really wanted to have a true two-hander with Sam and Britt. The caliber of those actors, you don’t want to split them up.
What is it about these books that you think translates to the screen so well, and in so many different places and languages?
HULL I think his true genius is he can tell the craziest plots. He’s the king of twists. But if you don’t make the audience feel for a character, if you can’t pull those heartstrings, it’s not going to work. Nobody really cares about the mystery as much as they care about who’s solving the mystery. If you don’t care about who’s solving the mystery, you’re dead in the water. What Harlan does, in all his novels, is he makes you care about these characters and the pressure that they’re under and the journey that they’re on.
COBEN I think the themes that we’re exploring, which are family, love, friendship, redemption, those are international. I’m actually surprised at how well certain stories work. These books were written mostly with New York and New Jersey in mind, but [it’s amazing] how well they work in places like Bariloche and Buenos Aires. But I think those themes are universal — the everyman or everywoman in extraordinary circumstances.