'Moonlight' director Barry Jenkins is already onto his next project—and it sounds amazing

In the aftermath of the stunning, if botched, Best Picture win for Moonlight, one might imagine that director Barry Jenkins could use something of a vacation, or at least take some time off before embarking on his next project. ONE MIGHT IMAGINE. But nope, Jenkins has already hopped aboard his next project and he’s got his sights set for television.

Jenkins will once again team up with Moonlight producers Plan B and Adele Romanski to create a television adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. In the 2016 National Book Award-winning novel, Whitehead imagines the Underground Railroad as an actual railroad on which actual locomotives operate, and the story follows Cora, a young slave who makes her escape and her way through the American South towards freedom. Jenkins’ adaptation will be a limited series, rumored to hit the TV marketplace in the near future.

No doubt Jenkins will bring his Oscar-winning-level vision to the project, matching the book’s direct examination of racism infused with aspects of magical realism.