After the release of the LGBT drama Moonlight, Barry Jenkins is known to have shot international acclaim and is heavily lauded in the film industry. Two years later, he was back with a colorful adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk and ended up winning an Oscar for the film while spilling off poignant Black Stories in a synaesthetic style.
This year Jenkins will be back again with The Underground Railroad for Amazon Prime as he will address American slavery in the upcoming limited series. The series will be based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel following the stories of two slaves, Cora and Caesar.
After working on this project for 116 days and delivering about 11 episodes from the subject-matter, Jenkins claimed that The Underground Railroad project had been one of the toughest things he had ever done, in an interview with IndieWire.
Thuso Mbedu will be seen playing the character of Cora while London actor Aaron Pierre (Britannia, Krypton) will star as Caesar alongside Mbedu. The King and Boy Erased actor Joel Edgerton will also be featuring in the film as Ridgeway, the bounty hunter.
