Hulu Will Bring Another Margaret Atwood Series To Life With Maddaddam Adaptation

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is the arguably the most successful original series on Hulu. It broke new ground for genre adaptations and brought the timely story back into the national consciousness. Now Hulu is continuing this tradition with a new adaptation from Margaret Atwood, this time is is her Maddaddam trilogy. Much like her other work, the series delves deep into socio-political issues. The main themes of the series involve catastrophic climate change; genetic engineering, mad scientists, and a deadly pandemic. All topics that are incredibly relevant to the world today.

A Maddaddam Adaptation For Hulu Is A Post-Apocalyptic Warning

Photo by George Whiteside via Authors Website

The first book of the Maddaddam trilogy is Oryx & Crake, set in a post-apocalyptic world with strange new creatures and terrors. Throughout the course of the novel we learn more about the mysterious protagonist. And we discover his involvement with the deadly (bio-engineered) pandemic that ravaged the world. The subsequent books in the trilogy – The Year of the Flood and the titular Maddaddam – travel back in time to explore the history of the world further. It seems likely that the Hulu adaptation will incorporate elements from all three books, and follow a non-linear narrative much like The Handmaid’s Tale.

And I’m not going to lie, this show is going to be extremely weird. If the showrunners follow the books closely then we will inevitably see a strange human/animal hybrid species that has taken over the Earth. Hulu better scale up their makeup and costuming budget if they want to pull that off without it looking cheesy.

Like many of her books, Atwood describes this series as ‘speculative fiction’ as opposed to science-fiction. She uses this designation because she can see the way the horrors of her novels could easily come to pass given current technology. The Maddaddam adaptation also joins The Testaments – Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – which is also on the docket for a future television series. The Handmaid’s Tale will return for a fourth season in April. A fifth (and possibly final season) will follow sometime in 2022.

Image via Hulu

Michael Lesslie Leaves Battlestar Galactica To Write Maddaddam

Michael Lesslie is onboard to write the Maddaddam adaptation for Hulu. Previously, Lesslie was attached to the Peacock reboot of Battlestar Galactica. A report from Deadline indicates that Lesslie has now left that project in order to work on Maddaddam instead. Previously director Darren Aronofsky was attached to a Maddaddam adaptation for HBO that never came to pass. But since Hulu is the home for Atwood’s work now, we have faith that this one will actually happen.

Author Margaret Atwood will serve as a producer on the Maddaddam adaptation for Hulu. Along with Paramount Television and Anonymous Content. You know we’ll be following this one closely as it develops. So be sure to follow Comic Years on Facebook and Twitter today to stay up to date.

Emily O'Donnell is a writer and photographer with roots in some of the earliest online fandoms. She cut her genre teeth on the Wizard of Oz books at the tender age of 6 years old, and was reading epic adult fantasy novels by the age of 10. Decades later, she still consumes genre fiction like there is no tomorrow. She is delighted to be living through the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy popularity. She is unashamed of the amount of fanfiction that still lingers online under her name.