Sterling K. Brown will star in a series adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The This Is Us actor will also serve as executive producer of the show, which is being developed at streaming service Hulu.
Edugyan’s 2018 book, a winner of the Giller Prize and a finalist for the Booker Prize and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, follows a young slave in Barbados who escapes from a sugar plantation with the help of an eccentric White abolitionist. A critic for Kirkus gave the book a starred review, calling it “a thoughtful, boldly imagined ripsnorter that broadens inventive possibilities for the antebellum novel.”
The screenplay for the series will be written by Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, the former Source magazine editor-in-chief who has written for Jordan Peele’s recent Twilight Zone reboot. Hinds will executive produce along with Brown, and Edugyan will be a co-producer of the show.
“Washington Black inspires me,” Brown said. “This young man and the adventure he undertakes remind me of how the power of imagination and the creativity of artistry can transform the world in which we live. Selwyn Seyfu Hinds has taken the transcendent words of Esi Edugyan and created a spectacular universe that brings to fruition the power of possibility.”
Hinds said that “writing Washington Black these past two years has guided me back home.”
“This show has been a conduit to that faith for those of us who’ve been creating it, and we’re beyond thrilled to be about the business of sharing it with all of you,” he said.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
