Who doesn't love a good book? At times, it's hard not to think about how good a movie or a series adaptation could be when reading one. Actress and producer Reese Witherspoon, who is also the founder (and "book-lover-in-chief") of Reese's Book Club, obviously thinks about it. She can also choose whichever books she wants to adapt through her production company, Hello Sunshine.
Witherspoon previously adapted Big Little Lies and Little Fires Everywhere. And now, she's doing it again with the critically-acclaimed Daisy Jones & The Six, a 2019 novel written by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This is the same author as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which is also getting an adaptation from Netflix. Reid's Malibu Rising is also in the works to get adapted. Before the book reached the bookshelves worldwide, Hello Sunshine had already acquired the rights for the adaptation.
Now, the Daisy Jones & The Six series is coming to Amazon. Let's take a look at everything we know about the streaming adaptation so far!
The Plot
The novel is written in a documentary style and follows the rise and fall of a 1970s rock band Daisy Jones & The Six. It goes into the personal relationships between its members in the Los Angeles music scene. The official synopsis reads:
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
Also, the book narrates stories of how the group came together, fights and amends between them, drug and alcohol abuse, their lives outside the music scene, and everything else we love to know about celebrities. Although the characters and band are fictional, it's impossible not to imagine Fleetwood Mac and The Velvet Underground & Nico while reading it. Fans of '70s rock and roll music will probably love the series.
The Cast
Sam Claflin (Peaky Blinders, The Hunger Games series) and Riley Keough (The Devil All the Time, The Lodge) will play the main couple, Billy Dunne and Daisy Jones. Fun fact, Keough is the granddaughter of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, and actress Priscilla Presley. So, she seems like an excellent choice for the part. To complete the rock band, the series cast will also include Suki Waterhouse (Billionaire Boys Club, Pokémon Detective Pikachu) as keyboardist Karen Sirko, Sebastian Chacon (Penny Dreadful, Pose) as drummer Warren Rhodes, Will Harrison as Billy's younger brother and guitarist Graham Dunne, and Josh Whitehouse as bassist Eddie Roundtree.
Veterans Jacqueline Obradors (Bosch, Palm Springs) and Timothy Olyphant (The Book of Boba Fett, Santa Clarita Diet) have been cast as recurring characters Lucia and Rod. Camila Morrone (Death Wish, Bukowski) will play Billy's wife, Camila.
Production & Episodes
The series will consist of ten episodes and will be presented in a documentary format, including background interviews with ex-members of the band in the present day. The episodes were written by writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who will also act as executive producers. Movie-goers and book lovers are probably already familiar with their work as writers in (500) Days of Summer and John Green's adaptations The Fault in Our Stars – the critically acclaimed young adult movie starring Shailene Woodley – and Paper Towns.
Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter will also act as executive producers, while the book's author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, will produce the series. Alongside Hello Sunshine, Circle of Confusion and Amazon Studios are the production companies behind the scenes making everything happen. The series will be exclusive to the Amazon streaming service Prime Video.
Release Date
As of now, there's no confirmed release date for the series. The production started in September 2021 and recently resumed after the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shutdown, and production stopped for almost a year. The cast shares backstage pictures of their work together and a little information about the filming in interviews. Suki Waterhouse has said in an interview with US Weekly that in preparation for the musical performances. To become keyboardist Karen Sirko, she learned piano during the pandemic shut down.
If we consider social media posts and that the cast was together in New Orleans recently, we can probably watch episodes of Daisy Jones & The Six by the end of 2022.