Min Jin Lee will adapt her 2007 debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, as a Netflix series, according to Variety. Emmy winner Alan Yang, the co-creator of the Netflix series Master of None and writer/director of the 2020 Netflix film Tigertail, will serve as executive producer for the show. No casting news or prospective release date was announced at this early stage.
In the novel, Casey Han is a 20-something Korean American New Yorker who recently graduated from Princeton University but currently has “no job and a number of bad habits,” including expensive tastes she can’t afford and an unfaithful boyfriend. The narrative follows her difficult interactions with her family, her career troubles, and her new romantic relationship. Kirkus’ 2007 review was mixed, but it noted that “some elements—Casey’s struggles with faith, her tempestuous relationship with her mentor/benefactress, a department-store mogul—are handled with a subtlety that bodes well for future books.”
Lee’s next novel, 2017’s Pachinko, was a finalist for the National Book Award; it received the Kirkus Star and was named one of Kirkus’ Best Books of 2017. A limited-series version of that book is in the works for Apple TV +. Lee was also a judge for the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, which was awarded to Colson Whitehead’s Kirkus-starred novel The Nickel Boys.
Yang shared a 2016 Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for Master of None, but he won’t be co-writing Free Food for Millionaires, according to Variety. He also co-created the short-lived 2018 Amazon Prime Video series Forever and wrote numerous episodes of the hit NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
