Netflix has ordered Calabasas, a new young-adult drama from Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen, a series set to move from Regency-era courtship to the social hierarchy of Southern California. Van Dusen will serve as creator, showrunner and executive producer on the adaptation, which is based on Via Bleidner’s novel If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous By Now.
The project puts a name with real local roots on one of Netflix’s latest attempts to build a glossy teen drama with broad reach. Van Dusen is a Montgomery County native, a Watkins Mill High School Class of 1997 alumnus and a former Daly Elementary School student in Germantown, and he now returns with a story centered on Via, a sheltered 16-year-old Midwestern Catholic school student forced into the image-conscious, socially competitive world of Calabasas.
Kim Kardashian, Alexandra Milchan and Emma Roberts will also executive produce the series, which is being described as being in the vein of classic teen dramas such as The O.C. The setup gives Netflix another high-school soap with an upscale setting, this time anchored in a place whose name has become shorthand for celebrity, status and carefully managed image.
The order also extends a creative run that has already proved Van Dusen can deliver global streaming attention. Netflix said the first season of Bridgerton was watched by 82 million households in its first 28 days and reached the No. 1 spot in 83 countries, numbers that helped turn the show into a worldwide cultural phenomenon after its debut. That performance is part of why his next series is drawing notice before a frame has aired.
The adaptation has been moving in the background for some time. Deadline reported in 2025 that Van Dusen would take over as showrunner and writer for the project, and the 2026 announcement confirms he is now the face of the series as well as its creative lead. For Netflix, the message is clear: it wants another polished, character-driven drama with the same kind of sweep that made Bridgerton a breakout, only this time the social climb runs through Calabasas.
What happens next is the part that matters most for viewers: casting, scripts and the first signs of whether the series can turn a familiar aspirational setting into something as sticky as the books and shows that inspired it. For now, Netflix has put its chips behind a creator who already knows how to make a world feel irresistible.
