'The Handmaid’s Tale' author Margaret Atwood on why it's 1990 movie adaptation didn't work

The fourth season of The Handmaid’s Tale recently premiered on Hulu and fans have been enjoying it, thoroughly. Margaret Atwood recently opened up about why she thinks the 1990 movie adaptation of the books did not work and more about the series. 

Margaret Atwood talks about why The Handmaid’s Tale movie didn’t work

The 81-year-old author penned the books back in 1985 rose to popularity in the literary world. The books have been adapted into the recent Hulu series of the same name which features Elizabeth Moss in a pivotal role. But prior to this, the book has also been adapted into a film back in 1990. In a recent interview with Variety, ahead of the Power of Women Luncheon, Margaret Atwood shared her views on why she thinks that the movie did not do well when it hit screens.

Margaret said, the 1990 movie had its screenplay written by Harold Pinter, who included a voiceover by the lead character itself but the director Volker Schlöndorff wanted to keep the film minimal and removed the voiceover. Atwood said that she thinks, the movie would have been better if the voiceover stayed. The author further mentioned that Natasha Richardson who played the lead character of Offred in the movie was quite upset and shared with Margaret that she had already recorded the voiceover and altered her performance as per that. Margaret added that the voiceover would have made the movie similar to the show, wherein Offred is seen thinking every now and then.

Margaret was then asked how she felt about the books being made into the streaming TV show, to which she said that she did not have any control over if the show was made or not; and that MGM and Danny Wilson used the original movie contract. She said that when the movie was written back in 1989, the only kind of TV series to exist were soap operas like Dallas, which was a pretty good one. She further added that when web-streaming came in it gave a whole new platform to show the story in detail. The author also mentioned that another major reason for the movie to not work was there was too much content in the book to be covered in 90 minutes.

Image: Margaret Atwood's Instagram