The Lottery Trailer Teases A Dystopian Future And Major Fertility Problems For Humanity

Lifetime has unveiled a pretty intriguing sneak preview of their futuristic new series The Lottery. The story for this drama is set in 2025, in a dystopian future where a global fertility crisis is underway. For some mysterious reason, women are unable to give birth. Now, one hundred viable embryos have been created and are ready to be implanted. A national lottery is held to determine who will carry them.

Is it me, or is Lifetime getting a lot more interesting lately? Between Witches of East End, Devious Maids and now The Lottery, the cable channel certainly seems to be aiming for diversity. That's not to mention my own guilty-pleasure appreciation for the Flowers in the Attic adaptations that have been airing in TV movie form at Lifetime. If there's a pattern developing at the female-targeted network lately, it's creativity and variety among its content. The Lottery seems like one more step in that direction.

Admittedly, every time I hear the title, I think of Shirley Jackson's short story by the same name. If you watched the trailer, you know that this series has nothing to do with that dark tale. Lifetime's The Lottery was written by Timothy J. Sexton and is set in a dystopian future where women have mysteriously stopped having babies. After years of trying to get to the bottom of this situation, Dr. Alison Lennon and her team manage to come up with 100 embryos, to be implanted into the winners of a national lottery. The trailer shows a bunch of women lined up outside a lab, waiting to sign up for the lottery.

The situation proves more complicated as a battle over the control of the 100 embryos begins. There also appears to be a plot involving a father and his son.

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The trailer for the series offers more than a few glimpses at the dystopian backdrop, and indicates a suspenseful tone for this series, as we hear news reports that ominously announce that "the last kindergarden closed its doors" and "maybe infertility is the disease." This is quite literally a life or death situation for the human race. The future of mankind may be riding on the success of these embryos. Who will host them and what kind of involvement with the government and these scientists have in their wellbeing beyond the conception and eventual birth? There's definitely potential for some interesting conflicts there, to say the least.

The Lottery premieres Sunday, July 20 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime. It stars Marley Shelton, Michael Graziadei, David Alpay, Athena Karkanis, Yul Vazquez, Shelley Conn and Martin Donovan.

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.