Hulu tells Handmaid’s Tale
Inevitably, the current TV drama boom has resulted in a lot of formulaic, derivative and half-baked series. But that has to be balanced against the impressive ambition of the industry.
This week, for example, Hulu announced that it has commissioned an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s iconic novel The Handmaid’s Tale. The only bad news about this is that it didn’t come two years ago so it could help my daughter with her English exams.
Written in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale centres on Offred, a reproductive slave who lives in the male-dominated totalitarian regime of Gilead. In Hulu’s TV version, Offred will be played by Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake), with Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears, and Warren Littlefield serving as executive producers (Wilson was also the producer of a 1990 film version of the story).
The adaptation will be written by Bruce Miller (The 100), with Atwood also on hand as a consulting producer.
Craig Erwich, senior VP and head of content at Hulu, said: “Hulu has established itself as a home for blockbuster television events and what better way to expand our originals offering than with a series based on this acclaimed, best-selling novel? Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was seen as ahead of its time and we look forward to bringing it to life on our platform.”
The Handmaid’s Tale is produced by MGM TV and marks the first collaboration on an original series between Hulu and MGM. It will go into production later this year and will premiere in 2017. In a joint statement, MGM’s Mark Burnett, president, television and digital group, and Steve Stark, president, television development and production, said: “The Handmaid’s Tale is a project we have been committed to bringing to life as its story remains as powerful today as it did when Margaret first published her novel. It has inspired a film, a graphic novel, an opera, a ballet and, finally, for the first time, a compellingly immersive drama series.”
Attwood added: “I am thrilled MGM and Hulu are developing The Handmaid’s Tale as a series, and extra thrilled that Elisabeth Moss will be playing the central character. The Handmaid’s Tale is more relevant now than when it was written, and I am sure the series will be watched with great interest.”
This week’s other big story is that National Geographic Channel has greenlit its first scripted series (as opposed to docuseries or miniseries), with the first episode to be directed by Ron Howard.
The plan is for the show, called Genius, to be a multi-season anthology series, with a different subject in each run. The first season, based on Walter Isaacson’s book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, will be adapted by Noah Pink. Production is expected to begin this summer in Prague and the series will premiere on Nat Geo in 171 countries.
Genius is being made by Fox 21 TV Studios, Imagine TV, OddLot and EUE/Sokolow. Fox 21 president Bert Salke said: “Genius is a franchise with infinite possibilities. We think this instalment, which tells the fascinating back-story of the man who articulated the theory of relativity, is just the beginning of a long and successful partnership between our companies.”
Howard said the show will be “an ambitious but intimate and revealing human story behind Einstein’s scientific brilliance,” adding: “I hope his story, as well as those of other geniuses, will entertain and inspire the next generation of Einsteins.”
Meanwhile, the migration of movie heavyweights into TV continues apace. Last week, it was Mel Gibson, and this week it’s Sylvester Stallone, who is set to star in a TV adaptation of Mario Puzo mafia novel Omerta (Puzo is best-known as the author of The Godfather).
The drama has yet to be attached to any network, but with Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) also on board as director, it presumably won’t be too long before that is sorted out. Omerta was published after Puzo’s death and had its fair share of critics. However, the halo effect of The Godfather will prove appealing to would-be suitors who can use it as a marketing hook.
While Hulu has stolen this week’s headlines, the other SVoD platforms have also been in the news. Netflix, for example, has ordered a second season of its new Ashton Kutcher comedy The Ranch – just a few weeks after the first season premiered. Set in modern-day Colorado, the series stars Kutcher as a failed semi-professional football player who returns home to manage the family ranch. There will be 20 episodes in the second season.
Meanwhile, Deadline reports that John Krasinski (The Office) will play the title role in a new Amazon series based on Tom Clancy’s CIA hero Jack Ryan. The new series, created by showrunner Carlton Cuse and writer Graham Roland, is reported to be “a new contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative, using the novels as source material.” For Amazon, the franchise will sit neatly alongside Bosch.
Finally, US indie studio IM Global has unveiled a slate of new TV projects this week. The company, which first got into the TV business in 2014, is working on five titles including Muscle Shoals, a project that has been in development for a while with partners Johnny Depp and Virgin Produced.
The other titles on the slate are I Rebel, LD50, The Lesser Dead and Planetoid. The Lesser Dead is an acclaimed vampire-themed novel from Christopher Buehlman, while Planetoid is a graphic novel first released in June 2012 by Image Comics. Written and drawn by Ken Garing, it focuses on Silas, a space pirate who crashes onto a planetoid where he must fight off various mechanical creatures, cyborgs and aliens.
tagged in: Amazon, Bert Salke, Craig Erwich, Fox 21 TV Studios, Genius, Hulu, IM Global, Jack Ryan, Margaret Attwood, Mario Puzo, Mark Burnett, MGM, National Geographic Channel, Netflix, Omerta, Steve Stark, Sylvester Stallone, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Lesser Dead, The Ranch