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‘Little House on the Prairie’ is coming to the big screen

Director and star Michael Landon takes break during filming of the television show "Little House on the Prairie" in 1976 to read a script.

Director and star Michael Landon takes break during filming of the television show “Little House on the Prairie” in 1976 to read a script.

(Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times )
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Laura Ingalls Wilder fans, take note: Walnut Grove is headed for the silver screen.

Paramount Pictures is producing a film adaptation of “Little House on the Prairie,” the television series based on Wilder’s series of books, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The film will be directed by Sean Durkin (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) and written by Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady”). No cast has been announced.

The television series of “Little House,” which aired from 1974 to 1983, was a huge hit for NBC. The show was written and directed by Michael Landon, who starred as Charles Ingalls, the patriarch of the Ingalls family, with Melissa Gilbert playing Laura.

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The show was not a strict adaptation of the nine books that made up Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series. The television program was mostly inspired by “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” the fourth book in the “Little House” series, which took place in Walnut Grove, Minn.

While the show was set in Walnut Grove, the Ingalls family didn’t actually live there very long. They settled in De Smet, S.D., in 1879; the final five books in the “Little House” series are set there.

The “Little House” books, written for children and based on Wilder’s life, have been favorites for years. The first book in the series, “Little House in the Big Woods,” was published in 1932; the final novel, “The First Four Years,” was released in 1971, 14 years after Wilder’s death at age 90.

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In 2014, Wilder’s autobiography, “Pioneer Girl,” was published by South Dakota State Historical Society Press, almost 85 years after it was written. The book became an unexpected hit for the small publisher.

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