Millie Bobby Brown has debut novel picked up by Netflix for new movie
As a streaming service, Netflix has never been in a position to create superstars from the ground up in a vein similar to the old Hollywood studio system, but Millie Bobby Brown is the exception who proves the rule.
The actor and producer has become one of the platform’s crown jewels, dedicating almost the entirety of her career to Netflix originals. Yet another collaboration between the two parties is in the works, with the streamer developing Brown’s debut novel Nineteen Things into a feature film.
Brown will produce the movie through her PCMA Productions banner – which has a first-look development deal with Netflix – and is in talks to star. Four-time Academy Award-nominated Bohemian Rhapsody and Darkest Hour scribe Anthony McCarten will pen the script, with the search for a director underway.
Nineteen Steps was only published in September 2023, but quickly became a bestseller due to Brown’s fame and name recognition. Inspired by her grandmother’s upbringing, the story follows 18-year-old Nellie Morris, living in Bethnal Green in the shadow of World War II.
She falls for an American airman named Ray but finds her world shattered in more ways than one when she survives the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster of March 3rd, 1943, when 173 civilians were killed and hundreds found themselves being crushed while trying to seek shelter underground during an air raid.
Brown and Netflix have become virtually synonymous with each other after the actor’s breakout role as Eleven in Stranger Things brought her to worldwide attention, with the 20-year-old going on to star in two Enola Holmes mysteries and fantasy blockbuster Damsel, all of which ranked among the streamer’s top ten most-watched original films ever following their release.
Next up on the docket is sci-fi epic The Electric State, another Netflix original in which she’ll star opposite Chris Pratt under the direction of Marvel Cinematic Universe veterans Joe and Anthony Russo, not to mention the long-awaited fifth and final season of Stranger Things that will finally bring the series to a close.
It was almost inevitable that Nineteen Steps would be scooped up for the movie treatment given Brown’s popularity, and it was an equally foregone conclusion that Netflix would be in pole position to make it given the outfit’s longstanding relationship with its author. Clearly, the partnership isn’t going to end anytime soon, and the literary adaptation is about as guaranteed an on-demand hit as anyone could ask for.