Netflix is planning to make a streaming series based on Maine author Ron Currie’s latest novel.

“The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne” will be developed into a series by Matt and Ross Duffer, creators and producers of the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things.” Currie will be a writer and executive producer on the series, according to a story announcing the Netflix deal Friday afternoon on the entertainment website Deadline. Currie, who lives in Portland, announced the project on his Facebook page Friday and linked to the Deadline story.

“Well now this very exciting cat is out of the bag…I’m adapting BABS DIONNE for tv at Netflix, with the Duffer Brothers (STRANGER THINGS) and my longtime screenwriting partner, Josh Mohr,” Currie wrote in his post.

The Deadline story did not say when the series might air or who might be cast. Currie did not immediately respond to an email Friday afternoon asking for more details about the project.

The novel came out in March and is focused on a tough but beloved Franco-American woman who runs an illegal drug operation in Waterville, where Currie grew up. Currie told the Press Herald earlier this year he wanted to focus a story on Waterville and its French heritage, both as a writer and a native Franco-American son. He said at 49, his memories of what the city’s Franco-American community were like when he was young were becoming so distant, he didn’t trust them anymore.

“I think most novelists, their instinct (when memories become distant) is to write your version of it, to get it down before it’s gone completely,” said Currie. “I’ve been circling around writing something about the world I grew up in for a long time. But stories, in my experience, don’t begin with wishes or with premises, they begin with character. And I didn’t have the right character.”

He found the character, Babs Dionne, partly in his memories of his own grandmother, who was not a crime boss. She was, Currie says, “a fascinating mix of toughness and love” and had a “sort of fierce-borderline-vicious love that was unique in my experience.”

After it came out in late March, the book quickly garnered national attention, including from The Wall Street Journal. It was recently picked by NPR staffers as one of their favorite fiction reads of the first half of 2025.

Currie’s first book, “God is Dead” (2007),  about God’s descent to Earth and subsequent death, won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. His 2010 novel “Everything Matters!” won the Alex Award from the American Library Association. His 2017 novel “The One-Eyed Man,” deals with the (then) new phenomenon of calling things “fake news.”

When Currie is not writing, he teaches creative writing at USM’s Stonecoast MFA program. “The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne” is the first of a three-book series. As a screenwriter, Currie worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series “Extrapolations.” As a screenwriting team, Currie and Mohr have previously developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America, according to Deadline.