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Tom Hooper released from movie jail to direct Netflix adaptation of Millie Bobby Brown novel
Tom Hooper released from movie jail to direct Netflix adaptation of Millie Bobby Brown novel
The Academy Award-winning director hasn't helmed a feature since 2019's Cats.
By Drew Gillis |
April 20, 2026 | 4:26pm
Screenshot: Charlie Rose/YouTube
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Nineteen Steps
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Tom Hooper’s 2010s were full of ups and downs. In 2011, he won the Academy Award for Best Director, and in 2013, he directed Anne Hathaway to an Oscar for Les Miserables_. Then, with just days left in the decade, he released _Cats _in December 2019, an infamous disaster that is still the subject of derision and scorn more than six years later. Now, Hooper has finally found a follow-up project in Nineteen Steps, though we suppose it remains to be seen whether those steps are up or down.
_Nineteen Steps _is a novel co-written by Netflix mainstay Millie Bobby Brown, which debuted in 2023. The novel is a romance set in WWII London—a setting Hooper is well acquainted with after _The King’s Speech _and perhaps, though it’s not really clear, Cats. According to Deadline, _Nineteen Steps _was both a New York Times and _Sunday Times _bestseller. It features, on its first page, the incredible sentence: “It was hot — the kind of heat that makes you long for the weather to cool down.” Brown published _Nineteen Steps _when she was just nineteen years old, and will produce and likely star in the adaptation for Netflix.
Clearly, Brown holds some real sway at Netflix. Earlier this month, she withdrew from the Kerri Strug biopic Perfect, which ended up sidelining the whole project. Still, given that its putting in the work to adapt her novel, it doesn’t seem like there’s any bad blood between her and the streamer.
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