‘Lonesome Dove’ Rides Again on Netflix: Inside Larry McMurtry’s Beloved Novel

More than four decades after Larry McMurtry sent two aging Texas Rangers on one last great adventure, Lonesome Dove is heading back to television with Netflix officially ordering a new series based on the beloved 1985 Western novel.

But for book lovers, the bigger story may be the novel that inspired it in the first place. Lonesome Dove was the recipient of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, became a massive bestseller and remains enormously popular 41 years after publication. Now Netflix hopes to introduce Gus McCrae, Woodrow Call and McMurtry’s vision of the American West to another generation. At the same time, the new series has a formidable pair of boots to fill given that the 1989 television adaptation starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones remains one of the most acclaimed miniseries ever made. 

At the center of McMurtry’s sprawling novel are Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, former Texas Rangers who have settled into a relatively uneventful life along the Rio Grande. That changes when they embark on an ambitious cattle drive from Texas to Montana, resulting in both an epic Western adventure and an intensely human story about friendship, aging, love, regret and the brutal realities surrounding the mythology of the American frontier.

Those qualities are prominent in Netflix’s description of its adaptation. The streamer says Gus and Call set out on a final dangerous cattle drive while confronting an uncertain future, with their journey populated by a large ensemble of memorable characters. The streamer describes the story in terms of “unrequited longing, unbreakable friendship” and the characters’ search for a meaningful life.

That description is important given that Lonesome Dove isn’t just a book about cowboys driving cattle across the West. Its characters, and the relationships among them, are a major reason readers have remained attached to it for four decades.

Why is the ‘Lonesome Dove’ book still so popular?

Published in 1985, Lonesome Dove spent more than five consecutive months on The New York Times bestseller list, with Netflix noting that the book remains one of Amazon’s bestselling titles more than 40 years later. But it was hardly McMurtry’s only contribution to American literature and film. His novels The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment became acclaimed movies, while McMurtry and Diana Ossana won the Academy Award for adapting Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain for the screen. McMurtry died in 2021 at age 84.

Lonesome Dove, however, became something of a cultural phenomenon all its own—and it wasn’t the end of Gus and Call’s literary story given that the author eventually wrote four novels in the saga: Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon. And it should be noted that their publication order isn’t their chronological order: Dead Man’s Walk and Comanche Moon explore Gus and Call’s younger years, while Streets of Laredo takes place after Lonesome Dove. For someone discovering the books because of Netflix, that means there’s considerably more McMurtry territory to explore if Gus and Call get under your skin.

Origins of the novel

What many people may not realize is that the original Lonesome Dove novel had its origins as a film script intended for three legendary Western actors: John Wayne, Henry Fonda and James Stewart. As McMurtry detailed to the Los Angeles Times in 1989, “It wasn’t about a cattle drive, but about three old cowboys having their last great adventure.”

That was in the 1970s, and later in the decade he tried no less than three times to turn the script into a novel, but gave up on it. His fourth attempt was the one that did the trick as he completed a 2,000 page manuscript. Managing to buy the original property back from Warner Bros. and saw his own adaptation of that script published in 1985. 

In an interview with USModernist.org in 1997, he addressed the question of whether the sense of myth surrounding the Old West still existed. “It’s a pretty strong myth,” McMurtry acknowledged, “and I think of most of my books as demythicizing. Particularly, I think of Lonesome Dove that way, but that’s not the way it’s read. It’s read as a reinforcement of the myth. People don’t see, or ignore, or don’t want the critical aspects of that book, or my whole work for that matter. You could say that my whole work is essentially a critique of that myth—the myth of the cowboy. It will be understood by some people, but by the mass of readers, it isn’t so perceived.”

He also viewed his intent in writing the novel much more plainly, as related to cowboysandindians.com: “I wrote Lonesome Dove in the main to try and understand my father, who was as fine a cowboy as I’ve ever known.”  

Netflix’s ‘Lonesome Dove’: What do we know?

Netflix announced the new Lonesome Dove on September 9, 2026. Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart will serve as co-showrunners, coming directly from another major literary adaptation: Netflix’s seven-episode East of Eden, based on John Steinbeck’s novel and starring Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist. It premieres October 1.

For Kazan, approaching another classic American novel appears to be something she takes seriously. Discussing East of Eden, she has described the challenge as making an epic story simultaneously intimate and personal.

That experience could prove particularly appropriate for Lonesome Dove, which similarly balances a huge physical journey with intimate character stories. “After our singular experience on East of Eden, we are thrilled to be teaming with Netflix again, along with Teton Ridge Entertainment, to bring Larry McMurtry’s Western classic to life,” Kazan and Stuart said in announcing the project. “We come to this material with love and respect, and can’t wait to hit the trail with Gus and Call and the rest of these beloved characters. Yee-haw.”

Netflix has described Lonesome Dove as a drama series rather than a limited series. No premiere date or cast has been announced.

The new ‘Lonesome Dove’ has a legendary TV version to live up to

In 1989, CBS transformed Lonesome Dove into a four-part miniseries starring Robert Duvall as Gus and Tommy Lee Jones as Call. The cast also included Danny Glover, Diane Lane, Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Frederic Forrest, D.B. Sweeney, Ricky Schroder and Chris Cooper, with the production becoming a sensation as it attracted an enormous television audience and would go on to win seven Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes and a Peabody Award.

For many viewers, more than playing Gus and Call, Duvall and Jones became them, which is undoubtedly one of the challenges facing Netflix. The new series isn’t merely adapting a famous book; it is adapting a famous book that many fans believe has already received its definitive screen treatment.

Interestingly, that doesn’t mean every McMurtry reader believes the 1989 version captured everything in the novel. Recent Reddit discussions surrounding Netflix’s announcement include considerable praise for the original (one reader described it as “practically” using McMurtry’s book as its script) but also hopes that a new series might explore material and darker themes that couldn’t be given as much attention in the earlier adaptation.

Some readers specifically want more of the novel’s melancholy, psychological complexity and harsher view of the frontier. That may ultimately provide Netflix with its best reason for returning to Lonesome Dove: not to replace the 1989 production, but to find something different in McMurtry’s 843-page story.

Who could play Gus and Call in the new ‘Lonesome Dove’?

Netflix hasn’t announced any casting, which naturally means people are already doing it for them. Texas Monthly offered an intriguing fantasy cast built largely around actors with connections to Texas. Its suggestion for Gus is Ethan Hawke, whom the magazine argues possesses the necessary combination of easygoing charm and gravitas; while for the far more stoic Call, it proposes Lee Pace, noting his ability to project intensity and “wounded masculinity.”

And the magazine didn’t stop with the two leads. Its imaginary Lonesome Dove ensemble has Selena Gomez taking over Diane Lane’s role as Lorena Wood and Jesse Plemons as the deeply flawed Jake Spoon. Mason Thames is its choice for Newt Dobbs, while Connor Storrie gets called on to step into the role of July Johnson.

Perhaps the most intriguing suggestion is Jamie Foxx as Joshua Deets, the role played by Danny Glover in 1989. Texas Monthly acknowledges Foxx might be a surprisingly big star for the part but argues that his stature and dramatic weight could bring something special to Deets. Finally, Connie Britton is its pick for Clara Allen, Gus’ great lost love.

Again, none of these actors has been cast by Netflix, but until the real announcements arrive, it’s a pretty entertaining cattle drive to imagine.

Why remake ‘Lonesome Dove’ now?

Netflix itself provides perhaps the simplest answer: the book hasn’t gone away. “Lonesome Dove is one of the great American stories,” Netflix Head of Scripted Series, UCAN Jinny Howe said, adding that the material deserves “depth of character, the sweep of place, the emotional precision.”

Jillian Share, president of Teton Ridge Entertainment, similarly pointed to McMurtry’s characters and “deeply human portrait of the American West” as reasons the story continues to endure. The company’s stated goal is to bring that world to a new generation.

That may be the most promising way to look at Netflix’s new Lonesome Dove. The 1989 miniseries doesn’t need replacing, and McMurtry’s novel certainly doesn’t, but a new adaptation could send millions of people back to the book—or introduce them to Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call for the first time. And for a novel that has already survived 41 years, one more trip from Texas to Montana seems downright reasonable.