Moonlight director Barry Jenkins' Underground Railroad series heading to Amazon

Fresh off of his Academy Award wins for Moonlight, Barry Jenkins is heading to television for his next project.

The Moonlight director is set to write and direct a television adaptation of Colson Whitehead's 2016 novel The Underground Railroad at Amazon, which gave the one-hour limited series a script-to-series order. The project will be executive-produced by Pastel and Brad Pitt's Plan B, both of which produced Moonlight.

A 2016 National Book Award winner, The Underground Railroad follows a young slave named Cora, who escapes her Georgia plantation in search of the Underground Railroad. She soon discovers that, unlike what we're taught in school, the Underground Railroad is a real railroad with conductors and engineers that runs along a secret network of tracks and tunnels.

"Going back to The Intuitionist, Colson's writing has always defied convention, and The Underground Railroad is no different," said Jenkins, who won two Oscars for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay in February, in a statement. "It's a groundbreaking work that pays respect to our nation's history while using the form to explore it in a thoughtful and original way. Preserving the sweep and grandeur of a story like this requires bold, innovative thinking and in Amazon we've found a partner whose reverence for storytelling and freeness of form is wholly in line with our vision."

Amazon has not yet announced a release date or episode count.