With a month to go before it debuts, Amazon has released a new trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s award-winning alternate history novel, The Underground Railroad.
We got our first look at the series back in January and again in February, about a young woman named Cora (played by Thuso Mbedu) who grew up on a plantation in Georgia, and whose mother Mabel (Sheila Atim) escapes without her. When she eventually does escapes along with a man named Caesar (Aaron Pierre), she discovers that the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad.
As they escape, they’re hunted by a slave catcher named Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton), who harbors some lingering resentment towards the woman—he was never able to catch Mabel. As she escapes, Cora has to come to terms with how her mother left, and the road and possibilities before her.
The book was widely acclaimed after it was released in 2016: it earned Whitehead not only a Pulitzer Prize, but also the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the National Book Award, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and was also shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.
Amazon greenlit the project as a limited event series back in 2018, which has Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) directing all 10 episodes.
The series will debut on May 14th in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video.
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