Moonlight director Barry Jenkins to write and direct The Underground Railroad TV series

'Preserving the sweep and grandeur of a story like this requires bold, innovative thinking'

Fresh off an Oscar Best Picture win for Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins has inked a TV show at Amazon.

Jenkins will write and direct The Underground Railroad, an hour-an-episode drama series based on the 2016 Colson Whitehead best-selling novel.

Selling over 825,000 copies in the US, the book chronicles ‘young Cora’s journey as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. After escaping her Georgia plantation for the rumored Underground Railroad, Cora discovers no mere metaphor, but an actual railroad full of engineers and conductors, and a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil.’

Barry Jenkins with his Best Picture Oscar (Photo: Getty) (Getty Images)

One episode of Netflix’s upcoming Dear White People aside, this will be Jenkins first time directing television.

“Going back to ‘The Intuitionist,’ Colson’s writing has always defied convention, and ‘The Underground Railroad’ is no different,” Jenkins commented (via 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’ Pastel Productions will executive produce alongside Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment which was also behind Moonlight.