Oscar and Golden-Globe winning director Barry Jenkins has been tapped by Amazon Studios to direct the entirety of its upcoming limited series The Underground Railroad.
“It’s an absolute gift to have Barry Jenkins commit to directing all the episodes for our upcoming limited series The Underground Railroad,” Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios, said. “Barry’s eye for character and sustained exhilarating, emotional storytelling style ensures that this project is in the right hands. We can’t wait to get started and bring this significant story to our Prime Video audience.”
The highly-anticipated series, based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, will consist of 11 episodes and follows Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia who is an outcast even amongst her fellow Africans and is struggling coming into womanhood when she meets Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia who informs her of The Underground Railroad, inspiring them both to take the risk and escape to freedom.
“Working with Amazon and a wonderful group of screenwriters to develop Colson’s novel into a limited series has been an extremely rewarding experience,” Barry Jenkins said. “Translating his singular voice into a cohesive and equally singular visual language is a task I very much look forward to.”
No release date has currently been set for The Underground Railroad, but the series will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
