News

Thriller Trad Wife Movie In The Making Will Star Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway is set to star in and produce a “trad wife” thriller, with a synopsis that blends Ballerina Farm with... time travel?

By Meredith Evans2 min read
Getty/Cindy Ord

Anne Hathaway baking pies, ironing shirts, and sweeping the floors in a dress and heels? Sign me up...I think.

Amazon MGM Studios has secured the rights to turn Caro Claire Burke’s upcoming “trad wife” novel Yesteryear into a film. According to Deadline, Hathaway is set to star and produce the movie. Industry insiders suggest the deal is in the $450,000 range with potential for up to $2 million, but the studio has yet to comment on the development.

The question is, what can we expect with Yesteryear? Deadline gives us a short synopsis: "Yesteryear is about Natalie, a woman who lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse on a working ranch is rustic and artfully cluttered, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last."

They add that there are "nannies and producers behind the scenes," and they have a "kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens." Her husband is the "Republican equivalent of a Kennedy," and her oldest daughter is asking questions about being a trad wife. Natalie is also a mega influencer, amassing 8 million followers on her platform.

Deadline gets snarky and adds, "What Natalie’s followers – all 8 million of them – don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re just jealous." For the uninitiated, liberal white women are the biggest haters of moms who post content about their cooking, traditional marriage, and kids. Safe to assume Yesteryear will cater to them.

Then, Natalie "wakes up in a life that isn’t hers." There's something off about her house, husband, and kids. Natalie somehow wakes up in 1805 and her kids are stinky and disheveled, her husband a poor, regular farmer. Her oven is gone. She can only cook with fire (the horror!). "Where just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade sourdough for her Instagram, she’s now expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her hands bleed," says Deadline.

Deadline speculates that maybe it's time travel, Satan, or God. Either way, Natalie gets pregnant "with her new husband’s child," and "it quickly becomes apparent that it doesn’t matter how she got here – all that matters is how she gets out."

So far, Yesteryear is giving Ballerina Farm meets Black Mirror. (Hannah Neeleman, the matriarch of Ballerina Farm, is in charge of their creative content, by the way. They don't have a production team.)

Hollywood is eager to capitalize on the internet’s obsession with tradwives and will likely satirize and profit off the growing number of women embracing certain traditional lifestyles.

Evie deserves to be heard. Support our cause and help women reclaim their femininity by subscribing today.