Elisabeth Moss is starring in The Handmaid’s Tale, an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s feminist masterpiece.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that Bruce Miller (Eureka, The 100) is set to helm the 10-episode Hulu series, with Margaret Atwood serving as consulting producer.
Daniel Wilson, Fran Sears and Warren Littlefield are on board as executive producers.
The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, a dystopian novel set in the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic military dictatorship that has overthrown the U.S. government.
It is irrefutably a feminist work, with the book exploring themes of female oppression and empowerment.
Lead character Offred is to be played by Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men fame. She comes from a class of women kept as concubines (or ‘handmaids,’ hence the title), and the novel chronicles her loss of autonomy, and her experiences as a man’s possession (her name, ‘Of-Fred,’ refers to the man named Fred to whom she belongs).
The series is set to debut in 2017, and fans of Atwood’s novel are understandably excited to see it adapted for the small screen — the 1990 movie version starring Natasha Richardson was good, but this type of story deserves much more time and attention.
This is all very exciting news, and we can’t wait to see how it pans out.
However, it should be noted that some valid concerns have been raised about the fact that one of the most iconic novels about female empowerment is being adapted by a white male.
Writes The Guardian‘s Devon Maloney:
It won’t matter if Miller hires only women to work on the series; that would be great, but it doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, all of them would answer to a white man, however benevolent. And isn’t that the exact problem The Handmaid’s Tale seeks to address? Why tell dystopian stories if not to learn something from them? If we can’t learn from them, don’t they become just another vehicle with which to say, “At least things aren’t as bad as that in real life”?
We can’t deny the irony of the fact that The Handmaid’s Tale, a deconstruction of the patriarchy, is putting a white man in charge.
As for the impact of the series itself, we’ll have to wait and see how Bruce Miller and his team handles this extraordinarily important story.