Following a competitive bidding war, Amazon MGM Studios has successfully won the rights to the film adaptation of Yesteryear, with Anne Hathaway attached to lead the project. It will be based on Caro Claire Burke’s upcoming debut novel, which is expected to be published by Knopf in 2026.
In addition to starring in the project, the Oscar winner has also signed on as producer through her Somewhere Pictures banner. This marks Hathaway’s latest collaboration with Amazon MGM Studios, after recently starring in Prime Video’s romantic comedy film The Idea of You. It will also be produced by Guymon Casady, Suzan Bymel and Alexandra Holcomb. At the moment, the film has no director or writer attached to it yet.
What is Yesteryear about?
“The story follows 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,” reads the synopsis (via Deadline). “So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy, her oldest daughter beginning to ask questions about whether her mother is a ‘trad wife’? 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. Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal of what life should be — and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
“Then she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children — they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is lit by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and disheveled, her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Her “daughter” informs her it’s 1805 — 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. Has she become the unwitting star of a brutal reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? Already reckoning with forces beyond her control, when Natalie becomes pregnant with her new “husband’s” child, it quickly becomes apparent that it doesn’t matter how she got here — all that matters is how she gets out.”
