Barry Jenkins, the writer and director of last year’s Oscar winner for best picture, Moonlight, is venturing into the digital space for his next project: an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s highly acclaimed The Underground Railroad novel into a TV series for Amazon.
Whitehead’s opus won the 2016 National Book Award for fiction and tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves on a Georgia plantation who decide to hatch an escape plan on the Underground Railroad, which, in Whitehead’s novel, is actually a secret train network. Jenkins will write and direct the adaptation (as he did for Moonlight, which was inspired by the Tarell Alvin McCraney play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue).
Jenkins had been working on the Railroad series for months before Amazon signed on, reports The New York Times. The series is being executive produced by Pastel, a company co-founded by Jenkins and Plan B Entertainment, Brad Pitt’s production venture, which also developed Moonlight.
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The series has not officially been given the greenlight, and neither a release date, casting details, nor an episode count have been announced just yet — though the Times reports that, given its high-profile nature, the project will skip Amazon’s typical pilot process and likely head straight to series.
“Preserving the sweep and grandeur of a story like this requires bold, innovative thinking,” Jenkins told the Times in a statement. “In Amazon we’ve found a partner whose reverence for storytelling and freeness of form is wholly in line with our vision.”
