Serena Williams is bringing Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Carrie Soto Is Back to the small screen, Deadline reports.
Reid’s novel, published in 2022 by Ballantine, follows the title character, a 37-year-old retired tennis star who decides to get back in the game after her Grand Slam singles record is surpassed by a hotshot new player. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “a compulsively readable look at female ambition.”
The Netfix series will be executive produced by Williams, widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Williams previously served as an executive producer on King Richard, the biopic starring Will Smith as her father and coach, Richard Williams. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, and Smith won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
The series will be written by Amanda Kate Shuman, who previously wrote for The Blacklist and The Wheel of Time; Shuman will also executive produce alongside Reid.
Reid’s novels have been adapted for the screen before. The television adaptation of her Daisy Jones & the Six earned nine Emmy nominations, and the film based on her novel One True Loves was released in 2023.
One of Reid’s best-known novels, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, is currently being developed as a feature film written by Liz Tigelaar (The Morning Show, Little Fires Everywhere) and directed by Maggie Betts (Novitiate, The Burial).
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
