Rose Leslie’s husband has some explaining to do in The Time Traveler’s Wife trailer
The sweeping, romantic bestseller by Audrey Niffenegger is the basis for HBO Max’s sweeping, romantic series
Aux News The Time Traveler's Wife
You think you’ve got marital problems? This lady’s got a time traveler for a husband!
Somehow not a sequel to Glenn Close’s Oscar-nominee The Wife, The Time Traveler’s Wife brings the sad reality of being married to a time traveler to life. Sure, it’s romantic seeing your hubby at different stages of life, but what if you just want to have a quiet movie night.
Rose “You know nothing, Jon Snow” Leslie plays Claire, the titular wife of Henry (Theo James), one of those husbands who spends all his free time galavanting through the space-time continuum. Unfortunately for Claire, since she holds an undying love for Henry, she must put up with his penchant for becoming unstuck in time and returning to different tragic moments in his life.
Based on the Audrey Niffenegger novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife was previously adapted into a movie starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. The film, which despite opening against G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, made more than $100 million. So, rather than doing that again, HBO Max stretched it out into a six-episode series.
And who better to adapt the story of a time-traveling husband for HBO than Steven Moffat, known for either saving or ruining Doctor Who and creating or ruining Sherlock, depending on who you ask. Moffat wrote the Doctor Who episode “The Girl In The Fireplace” in response to the book. He serves as executive producer and writer on the series. Although, it’s unclear how much of it he is writing.
“I read Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife many years ago, and I fell in love with it,” Moffat said in a statement. “It’s a story of happy ever after—but not necessarily in that order.”
The Time Traveler’s Wife will premiere on HBO Max on May 15.
41 Comments
I’m still skeptical this can be adapted well (its qualities as a book were somewhat specific to the medium, in my opinion), but this might be good. Moffat does his best work with limited series, rather than ongoing ones, so he might not mess this one up.That said, when I read the book, I specifically pictured Alicia Witt as Clare, and I’m still a bit disappointed that they didn’t cast her in the part before she aged out of it.
“Moffat does his best work with limited series”Except he still fucks it up because he has one of the biggest egos on the planet and thinks he knows better than the people who created the material he’s adapting.See Jekyll and Dracula.
If he sticks pretty closely to the source material, he should do fine. Good lord Dracula was awful.
But he can’t, because he has to show how smart he is… or rather thinks he is…
Look at me with a straight face and tell me Moffat hasn’t written brilliant television.
Listen closely or you’ll blink and you’ll miss it.
He can write individual episodes that are great but as a showrunner, especially when paired with Gatiss, he’s fucking terrible and it always descends into an ego-trip.
His time as showrunner of Doctor Who is the best that show has ever been in my opinion.Sherlock was fun for a while but definitely did run out of steam and was a bit of a mess by the end.
He’s a terrible showrunner only when he’s paired with Gatiss. I apologize for belaboring the point, but Moffat gets 100% of the hate when Gatiss deserves at least half of it.
And yet almost every great individual episode he’s written has been great in part because of its connection to a larger narrative, often one he’s conceived of himself.
But actually no. His best episodes have been standalone stories.Blink, Gas Mask zombies, Girl in the Fireplace, the library two parter.When he’s trying to build a season long narrative into his episodes that’s when he’s been weaker because he is like the TV version of JJ Abrams with his overreliance on mystery boxes with a terrible payoff.
Spoken like someone who only watched seasons 1-4.Besides all the other examples I don’t nearly have the energy to conjure, Heaven Sent is the pinnacle of his writing and is inextricable from the larger context of the story.
Actually I’ve unfortunately seen every episode of the revival.And the problem with Heaven Sent is that it would’ve been the pinnacle, if not for his random need to insert the weird Sherlock mind palace stuff and then basically break his own timeloop rules to allow the second half of the story and that season’s arc to finish.The problem with even his single episode stories when he was a showrunner is there wasn’t anyone to edit his stuff so he couldn’t help but do his “I’m so clever” routine and have quality damaging stuff littered throughout, like his insistence on making the Angels a recurring enemy when they only ever worked in one episode.
The implication that nobody edited his writing and that there weren’t other writers in the room to develop those stories is ridiculous. Not to mention that the second Angels two-parter was excellent and took them in a great new direction. That’s the only other time he’s touched them.If you’ve really watched every episode, don’t you miss him at all after the current era?
I miss him when he was at his best but his worst impulses would’ve still beaten Chibnall if not for this desperate attempt at his own legacy of suddenly banking left to making Thasmin canon for no reason.Also the Angels have only ever had a single two parter, and that was the one where Moffat wrote the creature whose entire thing was only moving when you didn’t look… and we saw them move on screen and it was terrible. And then it ends with the weird scene of Amy forcing herself on the Doctor.And the thing is prior to Chibnall Doctor Who didn’t have a writers room (https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-considering-us-style-writers-room-under-chris-chibnall/). Under Moffat (and probably RTD before him) he would come up with the concepts and then individually contact other writers to write out those concepts before giving them back to him.
As long as Gatiss isn’t involved, it’ll be fine. Man is a truly abysmal writer and brings out all of Moffat’s worst impulses.
Dracula may have been awful (I haven’t seen it), but the novel is a boring slog, so maybe he does know better than the original author.
I always pictured Adrien Brody as Henry.
I was mad because Lauren Ambrose and Justin Theroux were RIGHT THERE.
I always pictured Clare’s dad as Dick Cheney. Maybe he’s available to be in it. I also pictured Gomez as Dale Gribble for some reason.
I had no idea this series was about to premiere. I’d heard about it but assumed it was a long way off. It’s like I jumped into the future, and here it is!And this seems much better-suited for a six-ep series. The movie, amongst its many problems, just felt too rushed.
There is a core ickiness to the premise of the book that I don’t know if any adaptation can work around, that being that we’re supposed to view adult Henry telling Claire throughout her childhood they will end up married and basically grooming her as romantic and not gross, even to the point he takes her virginity in his forties when she’s a teenager. It was weird in 2003 and it’s gonna potentially be insurmountable in 2022.
Never read the book or seen the movie, but as I recall the big issue everyone had was that once you move to a visual medium, there’s absolutely no getting around the inherent creepiness of a naked grown man talking to a little girl, even if she’ll grow up to be his wife. Curious if they’ve come up with any way around that.
Like I said above it’s even creepier to realize that it’s just a tale of grooming.
I had wondered what ever happened to Theo James. I loved him in Golden Boy which only lasted i think a half season, maybe 1 season, but that was what? 12 or 13 years ago?
Ugh, we need a delete comment button.
The book this is based on is fairly insufferable and kinda gross. It’s hard to not read the story as a man grooming a woman through time travel. The book wants you to think of them as true loves forced to live a hard life because of the mans rare genetic disease of “time travel” but it’s also about a dude who meets a lady he likes who is conveniently already in love with him because he has been visiting her since she was five and already took her virginity. Also time travel as a genetic disease is stupid
I wish people would stop throwing the word “grooming” around, particularly in today’s climate.
He’s not trying to actively have sex with a child, which is what the ultimate goal of grooming is. Their relationship is weird for sure, but I imagine anyone who uncontrollably time travels to the past and meets their future soul mate’s child self, who’s help they need to live thru said time travel, would have similar weird issues.
I get why you don’t like the term “grooming” as it’s now a right wing buzz word used to attack people and companies that support LGTBQ+ rightsBut in the case of the book. He literally meets the woman of his dreams who is already in love with him and then promptly goes back in time and meets her as a child several times causing her to fall in love with him. The part that puts over the top into gross territory is the fact that he has sex with her on her 18 birthday. The story would be less gross if they didn’t consummate their relationship until they meet for the first time in his time line when they are both in their 20s
Calling the relationship grooming is really reductive. It’s supposed to be troubling, but seeing it as ‘grooming’ is simplistic and misleading.
I completely agree. He meets her as an adult and all of his interactions with her is with the knowledge that this is his wife.
Not sure Nilus has read the book – Henry meets Claire for the first time AFTER she’s known him for years but BEFORE he’s gone back in time to meet her as a girl. She’s the one who tells him they are destined to be together because he’s already told her that they are married in the future… For Claire, Henry has already told her they are going to be married.For Henry, this is the first time he meets Claire, so he hasn’t “groomed” her at all.When he goes back in time to meet her as a child, they are already married, so he’s hanging out with his wife as a child. It’s weird, but he even refuses to have sex with her several times when she’s at peak teen horniness but still underage.If it is grooming, it’s grooming in the interests of preventing a temporal paradox that could destroy the entire universe. Or, as Doc Brown said, the effect may be much more local, annihilating merely our galaxy.The idea of meeting your future husband and “waiting for him” until your 18th birthday even though you are desperate to bone him from 16 but he refuses… is supposed to be romantic and the time travel bullshit is what makes it NOT child-abusey or Lolitery. The book gives Claire sexual agency, as a person. She’s not some kind of virginal victim that needs to be protected from the depredations of Niffenegger’s perverted mind.Some of these critics need to go into a quiet room and get a grip on themselves.
Let’s not pretend you “stretch” a book into a series. Most books should be series, but instead get amputated down to a quick 90-110mins of all the highlights with none of the weight.
This, it was like if someone pitched the tv angle it would seem impossible to get the budget or the actors to make it work properly. So, get the actors, the budget and the butchered script and make it into a movie. For the longest time tv was always seen as a step down, that if you were in movies-to switch to tv was a failure. Thankfully that’s changed, otherwise we wouldn’t have some of the great shows we’ve gotten.
what if you just want to have a quiet movie night. —> what if you just want to have a quiet movie night?The film, which despite opening against G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, made more than $100 million. —> The film, despite opening against G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, made more than $100 million.writer on the series. Although, it’s unclear —> writer on the series, although it’s unclear
Steven Moffat, known for either saving or ruining Doctor Who and creating or ruining Sherlock, depending on who you askYeah I don’t get that all or nothing assessment. I liked Sherlock more than Doctor Who but I don’t think he ruined those franchises for me. I’m not overwhelmingly crazy about them in the way Fabreau and Filoni rejuvenated Star Wars but overall they were enjoyable.
The absolute best story about that sort of time travel troupe was done in a single episode of DS9.
“Somehow not a sequel to Glenn Close’s Oscar-nominee The Wife, The Time Traveler’s Wife”Because it has the word “wife” in the title it just has to be a sequel to “The Wife”? Was The Wife even about time travel?
It’s hard to picture Matt working on this article, thinking up that line, and then going “hah hah hah… yeah… this’ll be a good one.”
There was a pretty funny online parody of Time Traveler’s Wife. [I’m almost sure D’arcy Carden was in it but maybe not.] Basically the guy’s wife keeps catching him with no clothes and he goes into this “oh, I’m a time traveler” spiel but really, nah, he’s just fooling around other women…
As long as it’s better than the first movie (which was HORRIBLE), I’m looking forward to it. For all you pedophiles out there, he specifically waits until she is an adult to sleep with her. It’s a love story with a time travel twist. He has ZERO control on when or where he time travels. Not a story about a grown man zipping back in time to groom a child for sex.