Chris McPherson

Published Sep 8, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Chris is a Senior News Writer for Collider. He can be found in an IMAX screen, with his eyes watering and his ears bleeding for his own pleasure. He joined the news team in 2022 and accidentally fell upwards into a senior position despite his best efforts.

For reasons unknown, he enjoys analyzing box office receipts, giant sharks, and has become known as the go-to man for all things Bosch, Mission: Impossible and Christopher Nolan in Collider’s news division. Recently, he found himself yeehawing along to the Dutton saga on the Yellowstone Ranch.

He is proficient in sarcasm, wit, Photoshop and working unfeasibly long hours. Amongst his passions sit the likes of the history of the Walt Disney Company, the construction of theme parks, steam trains and binge-watching Gilmore Girls with a coffee that is just hot enough to scald him.

His obsession with the Apple TV+ series Silo is the subject of mockery within the Senior News channel, where his feelings about Taylor Sheridan’s work are enough to make his fellow writers roll their eyes.

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East of Eden is a book that has captivated readers for nearly 75 years. After all, great American masterpieces tend to do that. But it’s one thing on the page, and another entirely to bring the entire scope of his sprawling American epic to the screen. This story stretches from the Civil Warto the start of World War I, following generations of the Trask family in the Salinas Valley. Now, Netflix has decided to take that challenge head-on with a seven-episode adaptation led by **Florence Pugh **(Midsommar), and we’ve got a new look at what’s ahead.

We’re excited to include the film in Collider’s Exclusive Preview series and to exclusively reveal a new image from East of Eden, featuring Pugh as Cathy Ames, ahead of the series’ October 1 premiere on Netflix.** **The image shows Cathy standing on a dark wooden staircase, looking down from between the banisters in a dimly lit home. It’s a suitably ominous glimpse at a character whose arrival will have devastating consequences for the Trask family. Pugh’s Cathy has a much bigger role in this retelling than those familiar with the story might expect, too.

The cast is led by Pugh as Cathy Ames alongside Christopher Abbott (Wolf Man) as Adam Trask, Joseph Zada (We Were Liars) as Caleb Trask, Joe Anders (Cape Fear) as Aron Trask, Mike Faist (Challengers) as Adam’s half-brother Charles, Tracy Letts (Lady Bird) as Adam’s father, Martha Plimpton (The Goonies) as Faye, and Hoon Lee (Banshee) as Lee. The series comes from writer and executive producer Zoe Kazan (The Big Sick), whose grandfather, the legendary filmmaker Elia Kazan, directed the celebrated 1955 film adaptation.

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

First published back in 1952, the story begins in the American Civil War and then follows the Trask family across a number of generations. A modern retelling of the Book of Genesis, it opens with Adam Trask eventually settling in California’s Salinas Valley with his wife, Cathy, hoping to build a new life as a farmer, but their marriage soon ends in violence following the birth of the twin sons, Caleb and Aron. The boys grow up not knowing the truth about their mother and eventually begin searching for their own places in the world, while the previous generation’s secrets threaten to bring down the entire family.

East of Eden premieres exclusively on Netflix on October 1. Stay tuned at Collider for more!

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Christopher Abbott

Florence Pugh