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Hulu Starts Adapting Atwood’s The Testaments As Early Copies Leak From Amazon

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Published on September 4, 2019

Screenshot: Hulu
Screenshot: Hulu

The Testaments, Margaret Atwood’s Booker shortlisted (and as-yet-unreleased-but-now-sort-of-released?) sequel to her 1985 dystopian classic, is already being developed into a TV show by Hulu, the same home of the current Handmaid’s Tale television adaptation.

According to io9, Hulu and MGM are currently in talks with The Handmaid’s Tale showrunner Bruce Miller on how the sequel “can become an important extension” to the existing Hulu series. It’s not clear whether this means it will be folded into the show, which has already surpassed the original novel’s plot line, or whether it will be a separate production entirely. Since the sequel picks up more than a decade after the events of the first book, this really could go either way.

Here’s the book’s official synopsis, from Penguin Random House:

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.

When the van door slammed on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her—freedom, prison or death.

With The Testaments, the wait is over.

Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

Although The Testaments doesn’t come out until September 10, The Guardian reports that “hundreds” of US readers have already received copies from Amazon, which breaks the book’s embargo. Penguin Random House, blamed a “retailer error which has now been rectified,” and provided a statement to The Guardian promising the global publication date will remain September 10.

Although it might seem like just a matter of leaked spoilers and bragging rights for early readers on Twitter, Amazon’s screw-up has much bigger consequences. Astoria Bookshop’s co-owner Lexi Beach broke these down in a thread on Twitter, explaining just how serious these embargoes are and how breaking them can have a heavy financial impact on indie retailers.

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