
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is getting a TV spinoff series, 50 years after the film was released and more than 60 years after the novel it was based on was published. Producer Paul Zaentz, nephew of the original film’s producer Saul Zaentz, revealed on a podcast that he has signed an agreement with the widow of the novel’s author, Ken Kesey, to develop a TV series told from the perspective of Chief Bromden, who was played by Will Sampson in the film. After the first season, the show will follow Chief after he escapes from the hospital. Kesey disavowed the Miloš Forman-directed film at the time of its release because it diverged from his novel; the novel is told from Chief’s point of view, whereas the film centers on Jack Nicholson’s Randle “R.P.” McMurphy. The spinoff will be the second TV series based on the novel; the first being the prequel series Ratched that premiered on Netflix in 2020. Ratched was developed by Ryan Murphy and starred Sarah Paulson as Nurse Mildred Ratched, the role that won Louise Fletcher a Best Actress Oscar in 1976.