‘The Underground Railroad’ Teasers: Barry Jenkins Adapts Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novel For Amazon

When Barry Jenkins crossed the stage in early 2017 to accept the Academy Award for Best Picture for his tremendous coming-of-age story “Moonlight,” all eyes were looking forward to the director’s next project. Jenkins steered clear of a potential slump by adapting James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk.” He managed to adapt Baldwin’s masterpiece by bringing new life to it and also communicating the same feeling Baldwin puts onto every page. Now, Jenkins is back with an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Underground Railroad.”

“The Underground Railroad” is an alternate history novel focusing on two slaves in the 19th Century South who escape and attempt to make their way north following an actual rail system that runs underground. Whitehead’s novel became the first novel in two decades to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.

The only question mark surrounding “The Underground Railroad” is that it will be Jenkins’s first time helming a television show. He did, however, direct one episode of “Dear White People” for Netflix. Amazon Video is producing “The Underground Railroad” as a miniseries. The success of the series will rely in large part on Jenkins’s ability to translate his immense filmmaking talents to the world of long-form television. After two masterful films in a row, though, it seems foolish to doubt him.

The main cast of the series includes Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, Aaron Pierre, and Joel Edgerton. Mbedu — most of her credits include South African soaps and dramas — will star alongside Pierre as the two leads.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“The Underground Railroad” follows Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape.

Update: A second wordless teaser has arrived.