The critics may have been split, and reports of a slight troubled production earned some ink, the bottom line is that the final numbers on “Noah” were actually pretty good. The movie has earned $345 million worldwide, the director’s most successful to date (though domestically, “Black Swan” still beats it). So for his next trick? The lure of the small screen is callling, with a project that somewhat continues the thread Aronofsky began unraveling with “Noah.”
Deadline reports that Aronofsky will be adapting Margaret Atwood‘s “MaddAddam” via his Protozoa Pictures banner, with an eye to possibly direct it as a series on HBO. The novel follows the author’s “Oryx and Crake” and “Year of the Flood” in a reimagining of Earth after a horrific flood (sound familiar?). Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
Bringing together Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood’s speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community, and love.
Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, newly fortified against man and giant pigoon alike. Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. Their reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is recovering from a debilitating fever, so it’s left to Toby to preach the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.
Zeb has been searching for Adam One, founder of the God’s Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. But now, under threat of a Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters. At the center of MaddAddam is the story of Zeb’s dark and twisted past, which contains a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.
Combining adventure, humor, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy.
So yeah, it seems to be of the man fantastical mindset of Aronofsky’s “Noah” with a lot of the same themes. The filmmaker is no stranger to HBO, with his Michael Chabon penned “Hobgoblin” dropped by the network last year. But both sides believe there is fruit to be borne of a creative collaboration, with HBO inking a production deal with Aronofsky earlier this year. We’ll see if this project can survive development.