After the success of Hulu’s Emmy award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale, another dystopian work by Booker Prize-winner Margaret Atwood is set to be adapted for the small screen. Paramount Television and Anonymous Content have acquired the rights to Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. A television series based on the trilogy is in the works, but no network is attached to the project yet.
Consisting of Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013), the trilogy revolves around a group of people attempting to navigate a post-apocalyptic world.
The protagonists of the first book are the young boy Jimmy and his best friend Crake who invents a “wonder drug” that starts a global pandemic. The second book follows Toby, Ren and Zeb, who belong to a religious cult that managed to survive the pandemic. The first two novels run along parallel timelines, while the final installment takes the two books forward.
“Margaret Atwood’s unique and singular literary voice speaks to the greater issues facing our current climate and resonates with fans worldwide; the MaddAddam trilogy is no exception,” Paramount TV president Amy Powell said in a statement. She said the stories are “perfectly suited” for portrayal on television.
Atwood expressed her faith in the producers. “I am very happy with the vision described to me by Angus, Kent, David, Bard and Amy, as well as the stunning visual presentation they put together,” the author said. “I very much look forward to working with them.”
The trilogy was earlier supposed to be adapted into a TV series by Darren Aronofsky, but the project fell through in 2016. The Black Swan director is reportedly not attached to the current project. Atwood’s Alias Grace and Wandering Wenda have also been adapted into series.
