Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel “The Underground Railroad” won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Now it is being released by Amazon Prime Video on May 14 as a miniseries. The fictional account of the pathway out of slavery uses elements of fantasy. The film is directed by Barry Jenkins, who won the Academy Award for Moonlight. According to the New York Times:
For Jenkins, 41, who directed all 10 episodes, the series was by far the most ambitious and personally challenging undertaking of his career. It was shot in 116 days spread over 13 months, with a six-month shutdown last spring and summer because of Covid-19.
To realize Whitehead’s story, about an alternate universe in which the underground railroad is literal rather than metaphorical, the production created antebellum versions of five states (Georgia, where all shooting took place, stood in for the four others: South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Indiana), more than 3,000 costumes (by the designer Caroline Eselin), a 15-structure plantation and a custom, aboveground tunnel for an actual train. In all, the show employed more than 300 crafts people who worked over 16,000 hours of construction.
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