Back in August, Netflix assembled the avengers of its young adult slate at an end-of-summer bash in Los Angeles, bringing together the faces of the streamer’s past, present and future coming-of-age series for a night of cocktails and tattoos.
Worlds collided when “Outer Banks” star Carlacia Grant mingled with the cast of the “A Different World” reboot — which had yet to launch and earn a Season 2 renewal — and “Never Have I Ever’s” Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, “XO, Kitty’s” Anna Cathcart and “My Life with the Walter Boys’” star Nikki Rodriguez convened with the leads of new series “The Body” and “Crew Girl,” highlighting how its YA slate has evolved over the last decade.
Netflix has long been in the YA game with series like “13 Reasons Why,” “Sex Education,” “Outer Banks” and the “To All the Boys” films, but has re-invested in the genre over the last year with a lineup of new titles, which range from a Y2K-set tale of satanic panic stemming from a dance team ritual gone wrong in “The Body,” to a rowing love triangle in “Crew Girl” to a friendship falling out amid a college Bollywood dancing competition in “Best of the Best.”
“I’d say it’s a continuation, not a shift,” Nne Ebong, Netflix’s VP of scripted and studio series, told TheWrap of the streamer’s YA push, noting that titles within the genre have generated over 10.5 billion views since 2023. “This audience is passionate and tells us what it wants … We aren’t chasing an audience. We’re serving one that has made its appetite very clear.”
But a lot has changed since Netflix launched its first coming-of-age series with “Stranger Things” in 2016 and “13 Reasons Why” in 2017, and the YA genre has become much more crowded. Prime Video aims to become the “streaming destination for young women” and is off to a strong start after its buzzy “Off Campus” adaptation led a packed summer of BookTok hits. Even Hulu got in on the game with soapy series “Tell Me Lies.” For Netflix, the stakes are high as the streamer has hit a rut with engagement — leading to a shakeup in leadership with Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria exiting — and is looking to rekindle fan loyalty wherever it can.
Netflix is doing this by offering a wide breadth of different shows, from traditional YA projects like “My Life With the Walter Boys” to more series like “The Body,” which blends horror with teen angst. It also means being more mindful of BookTok, the rabid community of readers on TikTok that can serve as a kingmaker for new projects, and finding the right creators with a distinct voice to lure in audiences.
Not all of Netflix’s swings have worked. 2019’s mystery-tinged “The Society” had its Season 2 renewal revoked during the pandemic, 2020’s music-filled “Julie and the Phantoms” failed to catch on and the Austin Abrams-fronted 2020 Christmas romance “Dash & Lily” didn’t hit. But the megastreamer has been working in the genre longer than anyone else.
“I can’t speak to anyone else’s plans. What I can say is that we’ve been at this for a long time, and it shows in the range,” Ebong said. “We’re programming for anyone who’s ever been a teenager, not just those living it now, and that makes the audience bigger.”
So far, new launches like “A Different World” and “Crew Girl” have made enough of a ratings splash to earn the Season 2 greenlight from the streamer, and Jinny Howe, Netflix’s head of scripted series for the U.S. and Canada, is optimistic about the future slate.
“Each generation of these stories has brought in a new audience while the earlier ones stay beloved,” Howe told TheWrap. “That’s a long track record and a big commitment, and the slate we have now feels like it is the strongest and most varied it has ever been, full of romance, comfort watches, mysteries, nostalgia, global stories and bold swings like ‘The Body.’”
Not your mother’s YA
One of Netflix’s key titles on the YA slate is Quinn Shephard’s “The Body,” which follows a dance-team initiation gone wrong at a Catholic school that sets off mass hysteria in their town. You don’t need to watch the show, which is set in 2004, to see that it’s far from the definition that’s come to be associated with YA — trope-y love triangle shows that are often adapted from buzzy, romance books.
But Netflix was willing to stray from the norm for a voice like Shephard’s, which Ebong describes as “entirely her own.”
“That’s the sort of sharp point of view we look for: creators who have something to say,” Ebong continued. “Coming-of-age doesn’t have to feel safe. The themes at the center — identity, friendship, belonging, the intensity of being that age — are universal, and the Y2K-era world brings in viewers who lived through it.”
Even Howe admitted hearing Shephard’s pitch was “ambitious and dangerous and a little scary, to be honest,” but was lured in by how “lovingly detailed” it poured out of the “Under the Bridge” creator.
“She left us all with an unforgettable impression of not only what this show would look like, but how electric, sexy and fearless it would feel,” Howe said at the Los Angeles premiere of “The Body” on Tuesday ahead of its Wednesday premiere.
With themes of satanic panic, sapphic desire and teenage drug use, Shephard admits “The Body” wasn’t a “safe route” for anyone, noting that the greenlight and lack of censorship from Netflix is especially impressive at a time when the industry is “trying to figure out what the safest route” is. “They really let us cook,” Shephard told TheWrap.
“They never said chill out on anything … it was only ever supported and involved and emboldened,” “The Body” EP and director Gina Gammell added. “There is such a culture of fear … especially from these … massive corporations that are tied into the politics of the country, and I think that the fact that it… truly feels like there is artistic liberation within that is really cool.”
Something for everyone
While a series like “The Body” could bring in a distinct audience — maybe viewers who watched and enjoyed Mike Flanagan’s bloody YA take on “Carrie” but not “The Summer I Turned Pretty” — Netflix still has plenty of traditional entries in the genre like the romance-fueled “My Life With the Walter Boys,” which showrunner Melanie Halsall created in the vein of 2000s YA hits like “Dawson’s Creek” and “One Tree Hill.”
“Netflix knew what kind of show they were looking for from the get-go and were very on board with the tone that we were proposing for ‘My Life with the Walter Boys,’” Halsall told TheWrap.
If you’re looking for the traditional love triangle-filled YA fare, “My Life With the Walter Boys” and “Crew Girl” are there for viewers, but there’s plenty of projects that have a bit more edge, like “Ginny & Georgia” “Roommates” or “Best of the Best.”
For “Best of the Best,” the Bollywood dance competition movie that was initially at Amazon but moved to Netflix after movement on the project halted, the key for director Lena Khan was not leaning on “cheap tropes” found in some YA fare, explaining that she and Ramakrishnan worked to remove a love triangle that saw two childhood best friends fighting over a boy.
“College, which is … one of the most formative times of your entire life … people dismiss as being melodramatic … and I was like, ‘No, I want to make it as authentic to their experience as possible,’ and not cheapen the experience or make us looking down at it or be condescending to the audience by pushing it for laughs that aren’t earned or emotion that isn’t earned just for the sake of thinking you’re playing to teenage highs and lows,” Khan told TheWrap.
And while YA has been criticized for being primarily white and straight, Netflix’s slate is filled with representation in every corner, whether it’s through the South-Asian lens in “Best of the Best,” the HBCU students in the “A Different World” reboot or queer relationships all across “Heartstopper” and “The Body.”
“The shows that connect most are the ones with the most specific point of view,” Ebong said. “Representation works when it’s authentic, and we’ll keep looking for creators who bring that.”
Chasing BookTok
With much of the YA market now interlinked with the biggest sensations on BookTok — an increasingly growing corner of social media dedicated to obsessing about the latest romance book releases — Netflix has gotten in on the ground floor to some of the biggest hits, including adaptations of Hannah Grace’s “Icebreaker,” Carley Fortune’s “This Summer Will Be Different” (starring “Heated Rivalry” star Sophie Nélisse) and Lynn Painter’s “Better Than the Movies.”
“Readers are the most passionate fans there are, and we pay attention to what they love,” Ebong said. “We look for books with characters you fall in love with and a clear point of view for how to bring them to the screen.”
After “Off Campus” became a sensation for Prime Video in May, hockey romance “Icebreaker” could very well have the potential to break through in the same way.
“Fans of this book are passionate, and our job is to honor that,” Ebong said.” That starts with the story and the creators, keeping the characters whole while giving them room to grow … from there we’ll meet readers where they are, and I’m excited for them to see it.”
What’s next in the pipeline
The burst of titles this fall will be followed by series like “Poser,” “Icebreaker” and “This Summer Will Be Different,” but the streamer has greenlit a healthy stream of projects now in the works.
Looking forward, Netflix aims to keep growing its slate of creators “with a distinctive point of view on the story they’re telling,” with Ebong pointing to the adaptation of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep” set at a New England boarding school as an example of “a sharp, honest portrait of being on the outside of a world.”
“We’ll keep looking for the best coming-of-age stories wherever they come from,” Ebong said.
