Madeline Miller’s Circe is an absolutely perfect choice for an HBO Max series

Madeline Miller’s bestselling novel Circe is getting a television adaptation courtesy of HBO Max, and it’s exactly the kind of story we need to see more of.

One of the best novels of 2018 is finally making its way to a television set or streaming device near you – HBO Max has given a straight to series order to Circe, based on the book of the same name by author Madeline Miller.

(Personally, I screamed when I saw this news. If you have book nerd friends, they’ve probably told you to read this several times already, and I can confirm it’s even better than they said it was.)

In the most basic sense, Circe is a retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey, but from a very different perspective: The female one. (With a lot of other characters familiar to fans of Greek mythology thrown in.) Given that almost every other mythological or epic story we know from this particular time period – or, if we’re honest, almost any similar time period – is focused on male heroes and gods conquering monsters and shaping the Earth, well. A female spin on literally any of this is both long overdue and extremely necessary.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver are penning the script for the series, and we have absolutely no idea who’ll star in it. (So start speculating!)

Though Circe herself is obviously the largest and most important part in the story, a full cast of from the Greek mythological pantheon pops up throughout the story, including Zeus, Athena, Hermes, Prometheus, Jason, Medea and more.

One thing everyone should note, however, is that this TV adaptation of the best novel I’ve read in the past year will be heading to HBO Max, not your regular old garden-variety HBO channel. HBO Max is the needlessly confusing name of the new streaming service headed our way from Warner Brothers, which will also include a bunch of content from HBO, Cinemax and other related properties, such as DC Universe original programming like Doom Patrol. 

Like every other streaming service on the planet, HBO Max is also gearing up to produce its own slate of original content, of which Circe is just a part.

It’s maybe the most exciting part, though.

Miller’s novel is a wonderfully female-focused story about power, free will and self-determination that’s exactly the kind of thing television needs more of right now. It’s the sort of content that will help set HBO Max apart from the dozen other streaming services out there – a thoughtful, dense story based on literature we all vaguely remember from high school, but interpreted in such a way that it allows this familiar material to really say something new.

And the girl power angle certainly doesn’t hurt either, particularly when you consider the way that Circe was depicted in the original poem.

It’s about time someone told Jason to his face that he did Medea dirty is all I’m saying.

Anyone else obsessed with this book? Who’s your dream Circe? Let’s discuss!