Writer/director Barry Jenkins won plaudits and various awards (including a memorable Best Picture victory at this year's Oscars) with Moonlight, and he's naturally being sought out for other ideas. He's agreed to write and direct a miniseries about the Underground Railroad.
It's a big topic right now, with at least one other treatment – US drama series Underground – on the air. Amazon has hatched a script-to-series deal for Jenkins' take, which will adapt Colson Whitehead's 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, itself the subject of praise and winner of the National Book Award.
The story focuses on young slave Cora trying to make a bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, and she learns it's not just a metaphor – it's an actual underground network of tracks and tunnels. But when Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture as she attempts to find the Railroad, she and Caesar are suddenly the target of a hunt...
"Going back to The Intuitionist, Colson’s writing has always defied convention, and The Underground Railroad is no different," Jenkins tells Variety. "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."
Jenkins has worked on an episode of the Dear White People TV spin-off (hitting Netflix on 28 April) and also directed a PBS show, but this will represent his first time working on a show in its entirety. He's also developing other movies as he figures out the next step after Moonlight.
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