Barry Jenkins releases the latest teaser on his Amazon original series adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad.
Image credit: Amazon Studios
Award-winning film director, screenwriter and producer Barry Jenkins whose independent drama Moonlight won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and the talent behind the phenomenal If Beale Street Could Talk, has been wowing fans on social media with a trailer of his latest project, The Underground Railroad.
The teaser clip named In Aeternum, Latin for ‘forever’ emerges in reverse motion, following the perspectives of characters in the series as they’re pulled back in time. The almost hypnotic clip features no dialogue but rather a beautiful sampling of composer Nicholas Britell’s singular score, accompanying the visual clips of each character.
The teaser follows a number of others leaked by Jenkins, including Preamble, Randall. Cora. Randall and Speak upon the ashes.
The series, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel, brings to life the extraordinary story of the true-life Underground Railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses used by enslaved African Americans to break through to freedom. The new series will tell a similar story, following Cora Randall’s (newcomer Thuso Mbedu) desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.
Read our review of Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad
After escaping the Georgia plantation for the rumoured 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. Through her journey, Cora contends with the legacy of the mother that left her behind and her own struggles to realise a life she never thought was possible.
Over the course of her journey, Cora is pursued by Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton) a bounty hunter who is fixated on bringing her back to the plantation she escaped; especially since her mother Mabel is the only one he has never caught.
They say history is written by the victors, so…
…𝑙𝑒𝑡’𝑠 𝑟𝑢𝑛 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 👌🏿
(Follow @TheUGRailroadTV. Soon come 🙏🏿)https://t.co/PaYrMppF4J
— Barry Jenkins (@BarryJenkins) January 25, 2021
Jenkins posted the teaser on Twitter and wrote, “they say history is written by the victors, so…let’s run it back.”
Jenkins serves as showrunner and directs all ten episodes of the limited series.
The Underground Railroad will stream in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide on Amazon Prime Video in 2021.
