There cannot possibly be a more perfect setup for making a horror movie about a “tradwife” than whatever’s happening to women in the U.S. right now. Gender relations have reached a shocking new low, as Americans of all kinds struggle to navigate a new political reality defined, in part, by slang terms like “looksmaxxing” and “manosphere.” Shallow, misogynistic speech has seeped into the daily vocabularies of many, suggesting the toxic, anti-woman values that have long inspired such rhetoric are once again calcifying into a widespread and serious problem.

Simultaneously, actress Anne Hathaway is back in the spotlight during an especially busy time in her career (chaotically shared by both A24’s “Mother Mary” and Disney’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2”). She’s poised to eventually dominate Hollywood’s discussion around gender discourse with her upcoming adaptation of the controversial sci-fi, horror novel “Yesteryear.” Hathaway is attached to star in and produce the film through her Somewhere Pictures banner.

Reaching shelves just a few weeks ago, author Caro Claire Burke’s “Yesteryear” is a sometimes surreal piece of semi-historical fiction that imagines the ultimate tradwife fantasy curdling into a trap of wish fulfillment. Importantly, that trap is not some broad societal punishment so much as a deeply personal one for this character, a nightmare shaped by the very ideals she chose to promote.

When a misguided modern woman, Natalie, is transported back to the 19th-century American frontier, she’s forced to live within the historic period’s rigid domestic constraints, which she once pushed to her millions of followers as a more ideal way to live. That setting quickly transforms into a punishment the seemingly clueless time traveler may never escape. What initially reads like a generally cautionary tale reveals itself to be something far narrower as this specific woman is caught inside the logical result of her decisions.

Amazon MGM Studios acquired the provocative story’s rights in a competitive bidding war in July 2024, according to Deadline. Emmy-winning writer Hannah Friedman (“Obi-Wan,” “Willow”) was also confirmed to pen the script last year. No director for “Yesteryear” has been publicly announced, and the project is thought to still be in pre-production at this time.

The sense of mystery around both the “Yesteryear” novel and movie hasn’t stopped social media from speculating about its tantalizing premise. Even after the book’s wide rollout this spring, “Yesteryear” has continued to inspire increasingly loud, often ill-informed chatter online.

Across TikTok, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, Goodreads, and Reddit, reactions have focused less on the craft of fiction writing than on the spiritual subjugation of women that any media about this topic must, by nature, interrogate and include. That oversimplification is telling, and much of the current discourse treats Burke’s story like a sweeping indictment of conservative family values and motherhood, rather than engaging with how acutely “Yesteryear” centers on a single character’s self-made reality coming undone.

While some readers have described “Yesteryear” as a cathartic takedown of the patriarchy, others have bristled at its brutal twist ending and, from that, inferred a sort of nasty streak in Burke’s narrative approach. Plenty of others haven’t engaged with the book at all, instead using its premise — and ironically, Hathaway’s role as a female producer on the film — as fodder for the ever-raging American culture wars. In many cases, the loudest reactions seem to be responding to the idea of the book, not the arc it actually follows.

On one end of the spectrum, critics frame “Yesteryear” as an inevitable leftist attack on conservative women. On the other, you’ll find a swirl of posts that are more positive but still half-informed, widely reducing Burke’s novel into a flat meme that celebrates suffering. The result is a sideways PR cycle that feels less like an unusually strong reaction to the pre-production process, and more like an opportunistic projection of today’s politics that risks pushing the public to ignore the book Burke actually wrote.

Sure, plenty of movie studios would kill to have people fighting this frantically over any script they’re still planning to make. And yes, in 2026, rage coming from either side of the aisle is an incredibly powerful tool for marketing. But with such intense controversy already creeping into the “Yesteryear” discussion, and the film nowhere near theaters, are the folks making and debating it ready for the long road ahead?

Who (or What) Is a Tradwife?

The term “tradwife” is more slippery than it looks. In its most benign framing, the internet-born phrase refers to women who embrace a “traditional” (read: heterosexual, white, Christian) division of labor at home. That means these women are responsible for cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, and most other domestic duties, while their husbands are tasked with making money and major family decisions. 

When that lifestyle is represented on social media, it is often deliberately done in a retro aesthetic that suggests this mindset can serve as a portal to the “good ol’ days,” which, for many women who actually lived before this century, never existed.

In contemporary reality, the “tradwife” is more of a cultural Rorschach test, embodying both the wholesome, lucrative promise of a lifestyle brand — and the viral political messaging that can optimize content for growth.

In a recent essay for The Guardian, “Yesteryear” author Burke discussed the harrowing real-world inspirations behind her book, and traced the term “tradwife” from its surprising origins in online incel spaces to the mainstream influencer culture that’s widening the ideology’s appeal today. She notes that the label operates as both an aspiration and a provocation, making it ideal fuel for internet friction.

“Tradwife content is fundamentally performative,” Burke wrote. “It’s about constructing an image of domesticity that can be consumed, shared, and aspired to, rather than reflecting the lived reality of most women.” As a novel, “Yesteryear” ultimately tapers its focus away from American society at large to instead spotlight what happens when one person can no longer separate her true identity from an assumed facade. And that duality is what makes the concept so tempting to explore more deeply — particularly through the interiority of a complex woman who will be literally trapped on the big screen.

What Happens in the Book “Yesteryear”?

“Yesteryear” follows Natalie, a wildly successful tradwife influencer whose meticulously curated image includes a handsome husband, a beautiful farmhouse, and six adorable children. But Natalie’s picturesque reality also involves an elaborate network of behind-the-scenes labor and wealth that’s invisible to her viewers and essential to her hollow, precarious performance of so-called “real” life.

One day, Natalie wakes up in a place where the mid-19th-century aesthetic she once chose for herself remains, but the illusion of women’s joy and freedom within that universe is gone. With no electricity, no staff, and no agency, Natalie is suddenly forced to become the kind of tradwife she always pretended to be in the worst conditions imaginable. That disorienting time shift, into the far harsher historical world of 1855, Idaho, is what gives Burke’s book not just its spine but its compelling narrative shape. 

Natalie’s new life goes way beyond rural inconveniences — instead, punishing her with the kind of period-specific atrocities even the most “accurate” tradwives of today conveniently leave out. But jumping between that antiquated hellscape and the modern choices that brought Natalie there in the first place, “Yesteryear” doesn’t torture readers so much as force us into a hopeless descent. Crucially, that decline is framed less as a random act of supernatural misfortune than as the culmination of Natalie’s own carefully constructed latticework of mistakes.

That said, the plot is also propelled by a series of escalating shocks that would no doubt kill in theaters (even if Burke’s use of the word “mushy-penised” probably won’t).

Critically, the response to “Yesteryear” has been split but ferociously engaged. “Black Mirror” and “Don’t Worry Darling” are solid references if you’re looking for tonal touchstones in any medium. But Burke’s book is an especially good pick for readers of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Christina Dalcher’s “Vox” (which imagines a world where women are only allowed to speak a few words per day). But unlike those wider speculative dystopias, “Yesteryear” resists building an entire alternate system or government of oppression, instead zeroing in on one nightmarish existence.

Commercially, too, “Yesteryear” seems to be doing well, with repeat appearances on national book club curations and various bestseller charts. Note: We won’t spoil the novel’s entire plot here, but you can find several “Yesteryear” summaries online that detail what happens to Natalie and how she gets seemingly forced back in time.

When Will the Movie with Anne Hathaway Hit Theaters?

There is no official release date for “Yesteryear” yet, and given that Amazon MGM reportedly paid top dollar for the film rights, that uncertainty doesn’t tell us much about what’s actually happening with the film’s development or production right now.

That said, with no director and no official production timeline to date, the public perception of “Yesteryear” rests at Hathaway’s feet. That puts the movie in an interesting position relative to the actress’ broader professional trajectory. In recent years, Hathaway has moved fluidly between prestige projects and tentpole studio fare that spark complex conversations.

If “Yesteryear” moves forward soon, it will land in theaters within the next few years. But whether the goal is to create a high-concept adaptation anchored in a layered, award-worthy performance from Hathaway, or a ham-fisted genre movie with a built-in discourse machine, won’t be known for a while.

High Risk, High Reward (or, Free PR via the Far Right)

This far into horror history, “Yesteryear” fits into an eerily familiar category. In film, the genre market has spent years cycling through literary dystopias about extreme oppression, from “The Hunger Games” to “The Long Walk.” And thanks to Hulu’s hugely successful, Emmy-winning TV adaptation of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” gendered violence has never been more creatively permissible to depict on screen.

And yet, grouping Burke’s novel too neatly into that lineage risks missing its significance as a contained horror story reaching American audiences at a time when many people feel like they’re living a lie — or enduring some kind of simulation. Burke excels at articulating just how painfully Natalie’s mask hardens into a private hell that she’s subconsciously feared and created all her life.

But if anger draws attention to “Yesteryear,” it may also cut its emotion and nuance. The risk of the film being misunderstood looms for Hathaway, Amazon MGM, and anyone reading this who remembers the messy, outrage-driven release of “The Hunt” (2020). Will our taste for media that pisses us off make it until “Yesteryear” comes out?

Saturation in the dystopian film space risks fatigue among potential ticket holders, yes. But, this specific adaptation could be equally advantaged by presenting an imagined hell within our lesser, present one. The book’s main source of fear comes from collapsing the gap between fantasy and reality, and centuries of cautionary tales in both politics and art prove that kind of nightmare rarely goes out of style. 

A project this gutsy could pay off or backfire, but “Yesteryear” shouldn’t become shorthand for a cultural argument before it even gets made. Of course, dealing with the obstacles this film faces from the very start might just boost Burke’s concept above the caricature it may always be to some.