‘Moonlight’ director developing ‘The Underground Railroad’ series for Amazon
Amazon announced on Monday that “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins would be developing an original limited drama called “The Underground Railroad,” which will be based on the bestselling novel with the same name.
The book, written by Colson Whitehead, follows the story of a slave named Cora who tries to flee a Georgia plantation in the pre-Civil War era of the South. In the book, Cora discovers that the Underground Railroad is an actual underground subway line, complete with trains and conductors. The book became a New York Times bestseller, was the recipient of the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and was in Oprah’s Book Club.
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“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.”
