THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Barry Jenkins’ Move To TV
Barry Jenkins is joining the ranks of esteemed filmmakers leaping into television with his upcoming Amazon Prime title, The Underground Railroad. Premiering May 14, the series will mark Jenkins’ streaming debut.
The Underground Railroad is based on the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. It follows an enslaved woman named Cora (played by Thuso Mbedu) who learns about a fantastical — and literal — underground railroad that can carry her to freedom. Joining her is Caesar (Aaron Pierre), and the two are fugitives after getting mixed up in the murder of a white boy. Other notable actors in the series include Joel Edgerton and Lily Rabe.
As you may remember, Jenkins won Best Picture in 2016 for Moonlight. The upcoming series falls under his banner, Pastel, and has been in the works at Amazon since 2017. When it was decided to make The Underground Railroad into a series, he told its author that a movie wouldn’t do the novel justice. Jenkins wants to continue showing Black lives in a meaningful way.
“So, I’m standing in this cotton field as we’re scouting for the show,” Jenkins told Vanity Fair. “It’s the cotton field in episode one…and standing there, I thought to myself, I could buy all the cotton I can see with my eyes right now and burn it to the fucking ground. And I imagined that no one who ever stood in this field picking cotton could ever imagine that there would be a day when that would be the case, that me, a young Black man born into poverty, would be able to afford to just burn this entire field to the ground. Then I realized, yes, they must’ve.”
But it appears this will be Jenkins’ only Amazon project. The writer/producer/director has signed an overall deal with HBO and HBO Max that plants his banner firmly at HBO. It also brings A24 into the fold as Jenkins’ production company. The agreement will likely get Jenkins into more households, putting him in the company of Damien Chazelle and Jordan Peele, who both made a move to TV.
The Underground Railroad is poised to be one of the most significant episodic journeys of the year, and PROVOKR will be watching.
