Hulu developing 'Handmaid's Tale' sequel as series

Sept. 4 (UPI) -- MGM and Hulu announced Wednesday they are developing Margaret Atwood's novel The Testaments as a streaming series.

The Testaments is the sequel to Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the Hulu series adaptation of which has been renewed for a fourth season.

Penguin Random House will publish The Testaments on Tuesday. Set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments promises to answer what happened to Offred after she left Gilead, through the testimonies of three female narrators. On Tuesday, The Booker Prize for Fiction nominated The Testaments ahead of its publication.

The Handmaid's Tale is set in the dystopian Gilead, formerly the United States, in which authoritarian commanders have conscripted women to produce babies. Fertility has dropped in the future and they force fertile handmaids to wear red robes with white bonnets. The Emmy-winning Hulu adaptation stars Elisabeth Moss as Offred, a mother separated from her husband and child and forced to mate with the Commander (Joseph Fiennes).

Hulu is discussing with Bruce Miller, who adapted The Handmaid's Tale and runs the series, about adapting The Testaments.

Hulu and MGM Television also own the rights to Atwood's 2015 novel The Heart Goes Last, which tells of another dystopia based on the country's economic crisis. A gated community offers couples a job and a house every other month. The months in between they must serve as prison inmates.