Barry Jenkins dropped a first look at his upcoming Amazon limited series “The Underground Railroad” Monday, revealing the literal railroad at the center of this show based on Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel.
The short teaser for “The Underground Railroad,” which was shared by the “Moonlight” director on Twitter with the message “We the People…,” opens on a train station lobby packed with hundreds of Black Americans. The camera pans back to reveal more and more people until it reaches the literal railroad’s actual “conductors” in uniform.
In a voiceover, one man says, “Who built all this?,” and another responds, “Well, who builds anything in this country?”
“The Underground Railroad” stars Thuso Mbedu as Cora, Chase W. Dillon as Homer and Joel Edgerton as Ridgeway. Per Amazon, the nine-episode limited series “chronicles young Cora’s (Mbedu) 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.”
No premiere date has been set for the show yet.
“The Underground Railroad” is based on Colson Whitehead’s book of the same name, which was the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for fiction and 2016 National Book Award recipient. Jenkins directed all nine episodes of “The Underground Railroad” and executive produces alongside Adele Romanski, Mark Ceryak, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Sara Murphy, Sarah Esberg, Richard Heus, Jackie Hoyt and Whitehead.
The limited series hails from Plan B, Big Indie and Jenkins’ PASTEL.
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