Netflix has ordered a limited series adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, starring Meryl Streep, finally bringing to screen a novel that's been in development hell since before streaming was even a thing.
Let's start with the obvious: Meryl Streep in a prestige literary adaptation is not exactly a risk. She could read the phone book and get an Emmy nomination. But The Corrections? That's genuinely interesting.
Franzen's 2001 novel is one of those Great American Novels that everyone agrees is important but nobody can quite figure out how to adapt. It's a sprawling, multi-generational family saga about a Midwestern family's slow disintegration, packed with clinical depression, infidelity, academic failure, and Parkinson's disease. Not exactly Marvel material.
The book has been in development at various studios for over two decades. Scott Rudin bought the rights almost immediately after publication. HBO took a crack at it. Paramount considered it. Everyone passed, because here's the problem: The Corrections is literary fiction at its most literary. It's internal, it's dense, and its pleasures are primarily on the page. How do you dramatize a character's intellectual crisis about postmodern critical theory? You don't, really.
But streaming has changed the calculus. Netflix doesn't need universal appeal - it needs targeted appeal to specific audiences who will keep their subscriptions active. And the audience for "Meryl Streep in a complicated family drama based on a critically acclaimed novel" is exactly the kind of upscale, educated demographic that streaming services are desperate to retain.
This is also Netflix's latest attempt to position itself as the home of prestige television after years of being known primarily for binge-able genre content. They want to be HBO, basically. They want Succession and The White Lotus. They'll settle for "expensive show that gets think pieces written about it."
