Believe it or not, it’s only been less than two years since Barry Jenkins released “If Beale Street Could Talk.” And though his last feature arrived two years after “Moonlight,” it feels like it’s been forever since we’ve seen new work from Jenkins. Well, thankfully, the filmmaker is still working on his new Amazon series, “The Underground Railroad,” which should be coming soon (hopefully, at least). So we’ll have plenty of new Jenkins-helmed material soon enough, and then he has plenty of other things in the works after that.
But don’t expect any of those projects to be a sequel to “Moonlight.”
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In a recent interview with IndieWire, Jenkins admitted that the only time he thinks about a sequel to his Oscar-winning film is “when I’m drinking. I have to have quite a few drinks to get there. It’s just never occurred to me.”
He added that a sequel, if one ever does go into development, would only happen if screenwriter, Tarell Alvin McCraney, had an idea for a story he wanted to tell with those characters.
“If Tarell wrote a sequel… the story has to originate with Tarell,” explained the filmmaker.
Moving from hypothetical longshots to concrete reality, Jenkins opened up about his highly-anticipated new TV series that has been in development and production for a while now, “The Underground Railroad.” He’s writing and directing each of the nine-episodes, which are based on the novel of the same name from author Colson Whitehead, about a young man trying to escape the throes of slavery during the dark time in American history.
And apparently, the transition from feature film to episodic storytelling was enough of a concern that Jenkins reached out to some of the best in the industry for guidance. Those people include director Steven Soderbergh (no stranger to TV, directing episodes of “The Knick” and “Mosaic,” while also producing a number of other series) and Cary Fukunaga (who directed the Emmy-winning first season of “True Detective” for HBO, as well as the recent “Maniac” for Netflix). But even still, he found the production of ‘Underground Railroad’ to be incredibly difficult.
“It’s the toughest thing I’ve ever done, not because it was difficult to make physically, but just emotionally,” Jenkins explained. “I’ve never cried on set, with anything I’ve made. On this one, at least once every two weeks somebody would be like ‘you alright man?’ I would have to walk… off the set for 10 or 15 minutes because I was just distraught. Our guidance counselor pulled me off set one day and would not let me continue to direct.”
“The Underground Railroad” doesn’t yet have a release date for when it will premiere on Amazon. But based on the strength of the aforementioned “Moonlight” and his most recent feature, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” we are fully expecting Jenkins to turn in something special.
