Boy Swallows Universe Netflix series announced

It’s loved by millions and after the best-selling novel and the hit play, Boy Swallows Universe is coming to Netflix with Joel Edgerton as an executive producer

Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe is coming to Netflix.

Be still the beating hearts of Boy Swallows Universe fans because we have big news with Netflix announcing that the screen version is in the works.

And we can probably expect to See Boy Swallows Universe the series – eight one-hour episodes – on the small screen sometime in 2023.

Brisbane writer Trent Dalton’s much-loved coming of age (with a twist) novel about growing up in Brisbane has been a huge best seller.

Last year it was made into a hit stage production by Queensland Theatre starring hot young actor Joe Klocek in the lead as Eli Bell.The play was a sellout success during last year’s Brisbane Festival.

In 2019 Australian director Joel Edgerton signed on to co-produce a screen version with Dalton and now Edgerton has been joined by executive producers Troy Lum (Mao’s Last dancer), Andrew Mason (The Matrix), Sophie Gardiner, and Kerry Roberts with master and Commander writer John Collee adapting the book for the screenplay. It will be produced by Brouhaha Entertainment Australia for Netflix.

Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe, at Boggo Road which features in his novel - Picture: Steve Pohlner

No cast announcements yet but we reckon Klocek would be great as Eli on screen too. We assume it will be shot in Brisbane. It had better be.

Que Minh Luu, Netflix Director of Content, for Australia and New Zealand says the company is thrilled to have the production in the works.

“Boy Swallows Universe is truly something special, and it‘s an enormous privilege to partner with Trent Dalton, Joel Edgerton and Brouhaha Entertainment in bringing this genuinely iconic Australian story to Netflix,” she says.
“As Australians we know how much investing in local content matters. Boy Swallows Universe is a major milestone in our mission to unearth uniquely local stories that bring joy and connection in unexpected ways to our audiences here at home, and throughout the world.”

Joe Klocek who starred as Eli Bell in the stage version and Trent Dalton: Picture: David Kelly

Dalton himself is over the moon about the project. He’s known for his enthusiasm generally but he’s even more enthusiastic than usual about seeing his partly autobiographical story being made for the screen.

“That sound you hear is my heart exploding,” Dalton says.

“Let me scrape my jaw from the floor and whisper those words again and make sure this dream is true – Boy Swallows Universe is being adapted for the screen for Netflix.

“It will be an epic multi-part limited television series traversing the darkness of the Australian suburbs and the fabric of the human heart and stretching to the edges of the universe and our wildest dreams.

“The incredible Australian producer Troy Lum from Brouhaha Entertainment and the one and only Joel Edgerton – yep, that glorious and gifted Australian actor-screenwriter-director-producer bloke – are teaming up to bring a truly hyper-Australian story of crime, love and wonder into living rooms on Netflix.

Joel Edgerton is helping bring Boy Swallows Universe to Netflix. Picture: Nikki Short

“Australian yarn. Australian cast and crew together with Australian Netflix partners. A lucky Australian boy, and a massive audience.

“I wrote about all the very real things I saw as a kid growing up in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, in the 1980s: drug addiction, drug dealing, ex-cons and ex-killers, imprisonment, poverty, violence and love. So much love. And so much hope. So much discovery of hope through the power of love.

“When I was a boy, television was escape. You can’t see the holes in the fibro walls when all you see is Winnie Cooper’s face on The Wonder Years. I always dreamt about what it would be like to see stories on my television screen from the world that I knew.

“I never saw the world I knew in books, in movies, in television. That often brutal suburban Australian world that was just outside my window and the magical world secretly growing inside my head. I truly can’t wait for you all to step inside Boy Swallows Universe, coming soon to Netflix.”