Written by Liz Moore, the bestselling 2024 novel “The God Of The Woods” sounds like a prestige domestic thriller in the vein of Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” or HBO’s “Mare Of Easttown,” that can send a chill up your spine.
Set in the Adirondacks, the book follows the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl from a summer camp. Her vanishing reopens old wounds, as her brother mysteriously went missing in the same wilderness fourteen years prior. And now, Netflix is turning Liz Moore’s bestselling 2024 novel into a new multigenerational drama series with Maya Hawke and Kerry Condon set to lead the cast.
Moore, whose “Long Bright River” was previously adapted for Peacock, will serve as co-showrunner, writer, and executive producer alongside Liz Hannah (“The Girl from Plainville,” “Mindhunter,” “The Post”). Sony Pictures Television is producing the series, with Neal H. Moritz and Pavun Shetty executive producing for Original Film.
The story centers on the Van Laars, a wealthy family whose influence begins to crack when 13-year-old Barbara Van Laar disappears from her family’s summer camp. The case also appears to connect to the aforementioned family tragedy, giving the series a dual-timeline mystery built around class, privilege, power, and the damage that follows when money insulates people from consequences.
Hawke, known for “Stranger Things,” “Asteroid City,” and “Do Revenge,” will star as Judy Luptack, the first female investigator in the male-dominated Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Judy is assigned to investigate Barbara’s disappearance from Camp Emerson in upstate New York, walking into a case shaped as much by family history as by whatever happened in the woods.
Condon, the BAFTA-winning and Academy Award-nominated star of “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Train Dreams,” and “F1,” will play Alice Van Laar, Barbara’s mother. Alice is described as a woman hardened by an earlier tragedy and trapped inside a hostile marriage before her daughter’s disappearance forces the family’s long-buried problems back into the open.
The ensemble also includes Damon Gupton (“The Big Door Prize,” “Bates Motel”) as Denny Hayes, a Bureau of Criminal Investigation captain; Ella Rubin (“Sterling Point,” “The Idea of You”) as Louise Donnadieu, a working-class counselor at Camp Emerson; Susannah Perkins (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Politician”) as T.J. Hewitt, the camp’s director; Benjamin Walker (“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “September 5”) as Peter Van Laar III, the entitled heir to the Van Laar estate; Nell Fisher (“Stranger Things,” “Evil Dead Rise”) as Barbara Van Laar; and Autumn Molina (“A Really Haunted Loud House,” “The Lost Bus”) as Tracy Jewell, a young camper determined to find her missing bunkmate.
Moore and Hannah also offered a brief statement about the adaptation, telling Netflix, “We love making TV and can’t wait to bring The God of the Woods to life with our partners at Sony and Netflix. We hope everyone falls in love (and hate) with these characters as much as we have.”
There is currently no release date for “The God of the Woods.” For now, the series adds another high-profile literary mystery to Netflix’s development slate, with a strong cast, a recent bestseller, and a premise that clearly sits at the intersection of disappearance drama, family rot, and institutional power.
