'Firefly Lane' Series Coming From Netflix, Based On The Novel

Here's something we haven't seen before: an original series from Netflix! The streaming service, in its never-ending quest to have all the shows all the time, will adapt Kristin Hannah's novel Firefly Lane into a 10-episode series. The story follows two women who become inseparable friends over the course of 30 years. This will be Netflix's 500,000,000,000th original series (I might be off by a few digits, but that sounds right).

Kristin Hannah adaptations are big right now. Her books The Great Alone and The Nightingale are both being turned into films, with Game of Thrones helmer Michelle MacLaren directing the latter. And now Netflix will adapt Hannah's Firefly Lane into a 10-episode series (via THR). The story follows a rag-tag group of space pirates. Oh no, I'm sorry, that's the Joss Whedon series Firefly. Here's what Firefly Lane is actually about:

In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable.

From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness.

Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend.

For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship—jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.

The book jacket says Firefly Lane is "for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac," which I honestly can say is not me. The story is more "than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices."

Maggie Friedman and Stephanie Germain will executive produce the series, with Friedman also serving as writer and showrunner.