The Underground Railroad Series, From Moonlight Director, Greenlit at Amazon
The Underground Railroad is full steam ahead at Amazon.
The streaming video site has ordered a one-hour limited series drama based on Colson Whitehead’s novel, TVLine has learned. The project will be written and directed by Barry Jenkins, who co-wrote and directed the Oscar-winning film Moonlight.
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The Underground Railroad is a National Book Award-winning work that follows Cora, a young slave who tries to escape her Georgia plantation in the pre-Civil War South. When she reaches the Underground Railroad, she finds an actual subterranean rail system (tracks, tunnels, conductors, etc.) instead of the metaphorical network we know from history books.
“Going back to The Intuitionist, Colson’s writing has always defied convention, and The Underground Railroad is no different,” Jenkins said in a statement. “It’s a groundbreaking work that pays respect to our nation’s history while using the form to explore it in a thoughtful and original way. Preserving the sweep and grandeur of a story like this requires bold, innovative thinking, and in Amazon, we’ve found a partner whose reverence for storytelling and freeness of form is wholly in line with our vision.”
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The Underground Railroad will be produced by Pastel and Plan B, both of which produced Moonlight.
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