Little House Fans, Rejoice: The Beloved TV Show Will Be Made Into a Movie

From 1974 to 1983, readers who loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels could tune into NBC each week and watch Little House on the Prairie, a TV series based on the adventures of her Midwestern pioneer family. Now, the iconic show is slated to hit the big screen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film adaption will be made at Paramount Studios. No casting decisions have been announced, but Sean Durkin, who wrote and helmed the 2011 dramatic thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, is set to direct. Meanwhile, Abi Morgan, the film and TV writer who penned the 2015 British historical period drama Suffragette, will write the screenplay.

The NBC series—which starred Melissa Gilbert as Laura “Half-Pint” Ingalls and Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls, or “Pa”—was loosely inspired by Wilder's original works. It focused on the years that the Ingalls clan lived in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, which Wilder described in the fourth Little House book, On the Banks of Plum Creek. It also borrowed plot elements from other books in the series, including By the Shores of Silver Lake, which chronicled the years the family spent in Dakota Territory.

Younger devotees of the Little House books who never caught their small-screen treatment might be disappointed to learn that the upcoming movie will continue where the TV show left off. Still, nostalgic adults who grew up feeling a kinship with Half-Pint and her siblings will likely be thrilled to see the series finally get a proper Hollywood ending.