Generally speaking, Super Bowl ads are for bright, shiny blockbusters or bright, shiny consumer products. No one actually wants to think much beyond whether to have more wings or more nachos. So it’s a bit surprising to see Hulu try and hook audiences with “The Handmaid’s Tale” during Sunday’s match between Football Team #1 and Football Team #2 (sorry, I don’t follow the NFL).
Elisabeth Moss leads the highly-anticipated adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, set in a dystopian future, where a return to fundamentalist values sees women forced into sexual servitude. Here’s the official synopsis:
Adapted from the classic novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is the story of life in the dystopia of Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalism in its militarized ‘return to traditional values’. As one of the few remaining fertile women, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a Handmaid in the Commander’s household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate the world. In this terrifying society, Offred must navigate between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids – where anyone could be a spy for Gilead – all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” launches on April 26th. [Gothamist]