Florence Pugh's East of Eden Tops Netflix Worldwide Charts

Florence Pugh isn't just starring in a hit — she's anchored the kind of television event that makes people talk. East of Eden premiered on October 1 and, within days, climbed to the top of Netflix's global charts. The mini-series became the streaming giant's most-watched show in the U.S. and over 40 other territories, according to FlixPatrol.

Why did Netflix devote four years to this adaptation? Because John Steinbeck's novel is a leviathan of American fiction, a book his author called the work he'd been preparing for his whole career. Translating that heft to the screen required patience, ambition and a creative rethink — and Zoe Kazan, who wrote and executive-produced the seven-episode series, chose to rethink the story's center.

If you remember the 1955 film by Elia Kazan, James Dean's Cal and Aaron loomed large — that movie sketched a faithful but narrow slice of Steinbeck, and it largely sidelined one of the novel's most enigmatic figures. The new series does something different. It unfolds across two generations and places Cathy Ames at the narrative heart, interrogating how a family's past ghosts into present choices. The result is not a retread but a reinterpretation: a version of East of Eden that reframes a notorious character and asks the audience to reckon with her motives.

The cast bolsters that choice. Alongside Pugh are Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist; veterans Tracy Letts and Martha Plimpton add weight; Hong Chau appears in a part that the 1955 film omitted entirely; Joseph Zadeh, Joe Anders and Kieran Hinds round out a large, layered ensemble. Performances are the engine here — subtle, jagged, sometimes devastating. Pugh, who also serves as an executive producer, delivers what many critics are calling one of the strongest turns of her career.

Critics have largely embraced the risk. On Rotten Tomatoes the series holds an 87% critics score and an 82% audience rating, signs that this iteration of Steinbeck lands with both reviewers and viewers. More than fanfare, the attention matters because it reframes Cathy from a two-dimensional villain in some readings to a complex, fiercely drawn woman navigating legacy, desire and survival.

Zoe Kazan's family connection to the material is part of the story too: Elia Kazan, the director of the 1955 film, was her grandfather. That lineage doesn't make the new version an heirloom; it makes it a conversation across generations of filmmakers. The creative team leans into that conversation, expanding scenes, restoring deleted threads and giving sidelined characters room to breathe.

And Florence Pugh's schedule suggests East of Eden is more than a moment. She returns later this year as Princess Irulan in Dune: Part Three and reprises Yelena Belova in Avengers: Doomsday — both films slated for December 18 — while also producing and starring in The Midnight Library, directed by Garth Davis, her East of Eden collaborator. Add her casting to play both twin sisters in a film adaptation of Dorothy Baker's Cassandra at the Wedding, and you get a sense of an actor shaping an unusually bold, varied slate.

It's tempting to reduce success to numbers and headlines. But the true measure is subtler: how a new adaptation can reopen a classic, how one performance can reorient a familiar story, how a streaming platform's long bet can pay off when writers and actors dare to shift the angle. East of Eden hasn't simply revived a novel for a new audience; it's given it a new heartbeat — and left viewers wondering what Florence Pugh will do next.