Hulu Developing TV Adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “Maddaddam”

Hulu is picking up another adaptation of a Margaret Atwood series, this time with a TV version of her novel Maddaddam in the works for the streaming service, according to Deadline.

What’s Happening:

  • Hulu is reportedly developing a TV version of another Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) novel, this one based on her book Maddaddam.
  • Maddaddam is an apocalyptic thriller about genetic reinvention, corporate domination and young love. It is a trilogy of novels, first published in 2003, that comprises of Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and Maddaddam.
  • At the center of the trilogy, are the events leading up to the near destruction of mankind and civilization by a malicious bioengineered pandemic. The catalyst for it all is Crake, a brilliant and complicated young man so disturbed by the injustices of the world that he spends his young life developing a virus that will wipe out humans and replace us with a new species of hominid. The series not only looks at the events that lead up to that big moment, referred to in the books as the “waterless flood,” but also what happens after — including who and what shall inherit the earth.
  • Michael Leslie, lead writer and showrunner of AMC’s The Little Drummer Girl is writing the pilot script for the new series, having reportedly left a reboot of Battlestar Galactica in the works at Peacock.
  • Atwood has called the books “speculative fiction” and the story will feature the dark humor and satire she is known for in her timely cautionary tale.
  • Hulu is also working a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, an adaptation of The Testaments.