Rebecca Sonnenshine, the showrunner behind Netflix’s “Little House on the Prairie” reboot, has confirmed the upcoming series runs an eight-episode first season and uses the post-Civil War aftermath as a structural frame, with Luke Bracey’s Charles Ingalls haunted by visions of a brother killed in the war. Sonnenshine laid out the deepest creative look yet at the show in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published Tuesday, with under two months to go before the July 9 premiere.
The reboot, which Netflix renewed for a second season back on March 3 before a single episode aired, leans directly on the third book in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series, the 1935 novel that gave the franchise its name. “The first season is inspired by ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ the book, which tells a very specific story of them moving to Kansas,” Sonnenshine said. She has previously described the show as a love story about a family, and stuck with that framing throughout the interview, calling the project “an enduring and heartfelt story about a family who stays together no matter what.”
Alice Halsey, the 11-year-old who starred in Apple TV+’s “Lessons in Chemistry” and played Rachel Black on “Days of Our Lives,” leads the cast as Laura Ingalls. Bracey plays Charles, Crosby Fitzgerald plays Caroline and Skywalker Hughes plays Mary. Halsey is the same age Melissa Gilbert was when the original NBC series premiered in 1974. Casting her went faster than these decisions usually do. “I knew as soon as I saw her,” Sonnenshine said, calling Halsey “an incredible actress” who “feels things very deeply.”
The bigger creative swing is contextual. Charles Ingalls moved his family from Wisconsin to Kansas in 1868, three years after Lee’s surrender, and Sonnenshine said her writers’ room treated that timing as a load-bearing wall. “It just affected everyone,” she said of the war’s reach into the show’s characters. Warren Christie’s John Edwards, a Civil War veteran who becomes a family friend, carries a battle tremor. The series also depicts the Osage Diminished Reserve and the illegal land seizures running parallel to the Ingalls family’s settlement, with characters played by Meegwun Fairbrother, Alyssa Wapanatâhk and Wren Zhawenim Gotts.
“We did a lot of research into what really happened with the Osage in Kansas,” Sonnenshine said. “In the book, it’s definitely there, but they’re very much on the outside. It’s kind of impenetrable to them. But what we did was dig into what the reality was on the prairie, what the situation was with the reservation, the Osage Diminished Reserve, and try to bring it to life in a way that felt like a human story.”
The cast also includes Jocko Sims as Dr. George A. Tann, the pioneering Black physician who appears in Wilder’s third novel and treated the real Ingalls family during a malaria outbreak in Kansas. Sonnenshine framed Tann’s inclusion as part of the show’s broader portrait of a postwar border state. “Kansas was a very mixed state at that time, and it’s very soon after the war, so there were a lot of different kinds of people living there,” she said.
The reboot was first ordered to series by Netflix in January 2025, with Deadline first reporting the pickup. CBS Studios and Anonymous Content produce alongside Trip Friendly for Friendly Family Productions and Joy Gorman Wettels for Joy Coalition, with Dana Fox and Susanna Fogel also executive producing. Sarah Adina Smith directed the premiere, with Julie Anne Robinson, Kat Candler, Erica Tremblay and Sydney Freeland directing additional episodes. Trip Friendly is the son of Ed Friendly, who produced the 1974-1983 NBC series. The new “Little House” filmed last year in Winnipeg, where Season 2 production is set to begin June 12 and run through October 30.
Sonnenshine’s loyalty to the source material isn’t new. Her mother used to take her “Little House” books away as punishment. “We lived in kind of a rural place, so I found that the stories were very much like a part of my life. My mom and dad were very much like Ma and Pa. We raised sheep and chickens and ducks, my mom sewed all my clothes, and my dad was a hobbyist carpenter and mechanic,” she said.
Wilder’s eight “Little House” novels, first published between 1932 and 1943 with a ninth released posthumously in 1971, have sold more than 73 million copies across more than 100 countries. The 1974 NBC series ran for over 200 episodes across nine seasons and drew 13.25 billion minutes of streaming on Peacock in 2024, per Nielsen, making it one of the platform’s most-watched legacy titles. Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura on the original run, has publicly backed the new version in earlier remarks.
“Little House on the Prairie” premieres July 9 on Netflix, with all eight Season 1 episodes dropping at once. Season 2 begins filming in Winnipeg on June 12.
