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    Barry Jenkins To Write and Direct Amazon Series “The Underground Railroad”

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2716 Views
    Writer-director Barry Jenkins
    LOS ANGELES --

    Amazon is developing a script-to-series one-hour original limited drama, The Underground Railroad, based on Colson Whitehead’s National Book Award-winning novel. Set to write and direct is Barry Jenkins (writer-director of Best Picture Oscar winner Moonlight), with the series slated to be executive produced by Pastel (Moonlight) and Brad Pitt’s Plan B (Moonlight, 12 Years a Slave).
     
    Published by Doubleday, "The Underground Railroad" has sold over 825,000 copies in the United States across all formats. An Oprah’s Book Club 2016 selection, #1 New York Times bestseller, and the winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, "The Underground Railroad" 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.
     
    “Going back to 'The Intuitionist,' Colson’s writing has always defied convention, and 'The Underground Railroad' is no different,” said Barry Jenkins. “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.”

    Joe Lewis, head of comedy, drama and VR at Amazon Studios, added, “Colson Whitehead’s book is a sweeping, character driven, boundary destroying epic. Having Barry bring it to life for Amazon Studios is thrilling. We couldn’t be more excited to see what they create.”
     
    Pastel was founded by Jenkins, Adele Romanski and Sara Murphy as a home for artists to create provocative, boundary-pushing work in film, television and beyond. In addition to developing in-house productions for Jenkins, Pastel focuses on supporting diverse projects and empowering filmmakers that further the mandate of integrity, urgency and specificity set forth by Moonlight.
     
    Plan B is represented by CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. Jenkins is represented by Silent R Management and CAA. Whitehead is represented by Nicole Aragi at Aragi Inc. and literary agents Geoffrey Sanford and Brooke Ehrlich at The Sanford Ehrlich Company.

    Jenkins is also represented for commercials and branded content by production house Smuggler.

    Category:News
    Tags:AmazonBarry JenkinsThe Underground Railroad



    Review: Rachel Morrison Makes Feature Directorial Debut With “The Fire Inside”

    Monday, December 23, 2024

    "The Fire Inside," about boxer Claressa "T-Rex" Shields, is not your standard inspirational sports drama, even if it feels like it for the first half of the movie.

    There's the hopeless dream, the difficult home life, the blighted community, the devoted coach, the training montages, the setbacks and, against all odds, the win. We've seen this kind of story before, you might think, and you'd be right. But then the movie pulls the rug out from under you: The victory is not the end. "The Fire Inside," directed by Rachel Morrison and written by Barry Jenkins, is as much about what happens after the win. It's not always pretty or inspirational, but it is truthful, and important.

    Sports dramas can be just as cliche as fairy tales, with the gold medal and beautiful wedding presented as a happy ending. We buy into it time and time again for obvious reasons, but the idea of a happy ending at all, or even an ending, is almost exclusively for the audience. We walk away content that someone has found true love or achieved that impossible goal after all that work. For the subject, however, it's a different proposition; Life, and all its mundanities, disappointments and hardships, continues after all. And in the world of sports, that high moment often comes so young that it might be easy to look at the rest of the journey as a disappointing comedown.

    Claressa Shields, played by Ryan Destiny in the film, was only 17 when she went to the 2012 London Olympics. Everything was stacked against her, including the statistics: No American woman had ever won an Olympic gold medal in the sport before. Her opponents had years on her. She was still navigating high school in Flint, Michigan, and things on the home front were volatile and lacking. Food was sometimes scarce... Read More

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