Jesse Eisenberg is shifting his attention to television. Coming off his latest movie as a writer-director, A24‘s The Debut, starring Julianne Moore, Eisenberg is prepping a TV series, also for A24. Written, executive produced and to be directed by Eisenberg, the show, which is expected to be taken out in the coming weeks, is executive produced by former Disney and Fox executive Peter Rice, who was just named Chief Content Officer for Netflix, under his A24 deal.
The yet-untitled series is based on a short story by Eisenberg about a young woman where new ideas and relationships challenge her beliefs, sources said. In a interview with THR on the red carpet for the London Film Festival premiere of The Debut, Eisenberg noted that It is about the beginning of the culture wars and follows an 18-year-old girl in the fall of 2002.
It is unclear whether the short story in question is the tale of Harper Jablonski, a freshman struggling with her college experience, from Eisenberg’s 2016 collection of short stories, Bream Gives Me Hiccups.
Netflix — now with Rice at the content helm — will likely be in the mix for the series; the streamer is home to such high-profile A24 shows as Beef and the upcoming untitled Millie Bobby Brown & David Harbour spy drama and Trigger Point, headlined by Joel Edgerton.
Given Rice’s new job, he is not expected to have hands-on involvement going forward but will likely retain his executive producer credit. Netflix’s top film executive Dan Lin and Ori Marmur remain EPs on Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender series and Prime Video’s The Boys franchise, respectively.
After an early stage career as a child actor, Eisenberg made his screen debut on TV as part of the main cast of Fox’s 1999 comedy-drama series Get Real. He then transitioned to movies where his main focus has been for the past two and a half decades, including his Oscar-nominated performance as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network and his Oscar win for writing his 2024 feature A Real Pain.
The Debut marks Eisenberg’s third feature as a writer-director, following the 2022 When You Finish Saving the World and A Real Pain. In TV, he most recently starred in the 2022 FX limited series Fleishman Is In Trouble. He previously developed a TV series adaptation of his short story collection Bream Gives Me Hiccups for Amazon and A24 a decade ago and single-camera comedy The Market for J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros. TV.